Nervos Network (with CKB as its native token) will have its first halving on November 19. This event will reduce CKB’s hard cap base issuance rate by half, reducing the actual inflation rate from 7.92% to 3.77%, the lowest among mainstream Layer1 blockchains.
In nominal terms, CKB base issuance will drop from 4.2 billion to 2.1 billion per year, while secondary issuance will remain unchanged (there is no cap on secondary issuance and it follows a fixed release schedule) at 1.344 billion per year.
Uncapped secondary issuance prevents excessive state growth and ensures that CKB miners receive a predictable long-term revenue stream independent of transaction volume. Notably, the inflation caused by secondary releases is narrow and only affects state occupiers, meaning that CKB is an inflation-resistant token for its long-term holders.
About the Public Knowledge Base
Layer 1 of the network is called Common Knowledge Base (CKB), which uses proof-of-work (PoW) consensus, a groundbreaking universal UTXO model, and a virtual machine based on the RISC-V instruction set to perform transactions and smart contracts.
CKB’s high flexibility enables it to support a wide range of extensions and application solutions built on it, while the security provided by proof-of-work ensures that the network’s global digital infrastructure remains resilient, neutral, and permissionless.
More than just “account abstraction”
CKB is committed to setting new industry standards for the flexibility of account abstraction. Its accounting model is called the Cell model, which is a generalization of the Bitcoin UTXO model, enabling developers to fully control the data structure stored on the chain and the transaction authorization logic, making the CKB "account" abstract in definition.
In addition, CKB utilizes a completely abstracted low-level virtual machine, called CKB-VM, which allows developers to deploy a variety of signing and hashing algorithms, operating similarly to plug-ins without the need for hard forks. Unlike other platforms (where cryptographic primitives are hardcoded through the protocol), this protocol-level abstraction allows transactions to be signed using signatures from any blockchain system (even more widely supported standards such as Passkeys or DKIM), truly redefining what blockchain can do.
Products like JoyID, a convenient WebAuthn wallet, and d.id, a chain-agnostic decentralized identity provider, are already using CKB to provide quality blockchain experiences to hundreds of thousands of users.
Solving the state bloat challenge
The design of Nervos Network directly addresses the problem of state bloat. It adopts a multi-layer architecture and links state growth to the network's native token, that is, one CKB represents the right to store one byte of data on the chain.
The architecture reduces on-chain storage requirements by facilitating off-chain computations, while limiting the state growth of the blockchain by issuing CKB, thereby minimizing node hardware requirements and ensuring network decentralization.
Additionally, state rent is implemented through a narrow target inflation, incentivizing responsible state management on-chain and providing miners with a sustainable, predictable long-term revenue stream.
The first halving is coming
As the first CKB halving event approaches, Nervos Network is striving to continuously pursue innovation in the industry and maintain long-term sustainable development.
