State Of Nervos Q2 2025

What Happened

Nervos CKB completed development of the Meepo hard fork. The fork introduces modular contract execution through the Spawn syscall and activates CKB-VM v2.

The Nervos Community Catalyst program launched in May with 14 active contributors across builder, content, and advocacy tracks. In parallel, the CKB Eco Fund introduced the Spark Program in Q2 2025, a mini-grant initiative with a transparency dashboard that onboarded its first project, Quantum Purse.

Nervos CKB launched in November 2019 and has since introduced RGB++, an asset issuance protocol that maps Bitcoin-based assets to Nervos CKB cells through isomorphic binding. These assets retain Bitcoin's settlement guarantees while benefiting from Nervos CKB's programmability.

To expand interoperability and programmability, Nervos introduced the RGB++ Layer in July 2024. It extends RGB++ to other UTXO-based networks and enables smart contracts for RGB++ assets. Nervos also launched Fiber Network in February 2025, a Lightning-compatible payment channel system designed for low-cost, multi-token transfers that remain interoperable with Bitcoin.

Market Context

CKB’s price fell 27.4% QoQ and its circulating market cap declined to $159.1 million. DAO deposits fell 2.4% QoQ to 7.6 billion CKB, and the network’s average hash rate dropped 28.4% to 282.6 PH/s.

Why It Matters

Key Insights

Godwoken and Force Bridge began a phased shutdown, marking Nervos’s exit from EVM and bridge-based interoperability. The move redirects engineering and community efforts toward Bitcoin integration and offchain scaling.

Details

The Fiber Network continued to expand Nervos’s Lightning-compatible payments stack. Multi-hop routing, multi-asset channels, and Lightning invoices advanced through Q2.

Primer

Nervos Network (CKB) is a Bitcoin-adjacent Layer-1 designed to scale Bitcoin's functionality. Its base layer, the Common Knowledge Base (Nervos CKB), uses Proof-of-Work but generalizes Bitcoin's UTXO model with a custom Cell Model that supports arbitrary state and computation. Nervos CKB also includes CKB-VM, a virtual machine based on RISC-V that supports smart contracts and multiple programming languages, including C and Rust.

For a full primer on Nervos, refer to our Initiation of Coverage report.

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Key Metrics

Research Contents

Ecosystem Analysis

Nervos DAO

Total deposits in the Nervos DAO declined 2.4% QoQ to 7.6 billion CKB by the end of Q2 2025. The deposit-to-circulation ratio, which tracks the ratio between Nervos DAO deposits and CKB’s circulating supply, fell to 16.2% by the end of June.

Nervos DAO allows CKB holders to offset dilution from the network’s ongoing issuance. By locking tokens into the DAO smart contract, users earn rewards from secondary issuance at an APR that matches the annual secondary issuance rate. This rate gradually decreases as total supply grows. Deposits require a minimum of 102 CKB and can be made at any time, but withdrawals are only allowed at the end of each 30-day cycle.

NervDAO is a wallet interface that simplifies access to the Nervos DAO. It supports deposits and withdrawals through CKB-compatible wallets like Metamask, UTXO Global, and JoyID.

RGB++ Activity

In Q2 2025, usage on RGB++ continued to decline. The total number of transactions fell 55.3% QoQ to 195. Also, total newly mapped Bitcoin addresses dropped 74% QoQ to 32. However, there was a slight uptick in new asset creation on RGB++, increasing 4.7% QoQ to 623.

RGB++ is a protocol built on Nervos that connects the Bitcoin and Nervos ecosystems by mapping Bitcoin's transaction outputs (UTXOs) to Nervos' cell-based storage. This enables more advanced management of digital assets, smart contracts, and applications, which make it possible to securely issue and manage complex assets on Bitcoin-backed blockchains.

Ecosystem Updates