Q1 report 2026
Executive Summary
Q1 2026 was a quarter of continued momentum across all of Nervos Community Catalyst’s core programmes. The Community Keeps Building initiative reached 46 participants, with accelerated development at the heart of current progress. Supporting an expanding group of builders at varying stages of development remains the central challenge, and new structures around mentorship, project tracking, and AI tooling have been introduced to address this. The highlight of the quarter was the Claw & Order hackathon, which produced 22 open-source agent projects in two weeks and demonstrated the depth of talent present in the CKB developer community. CKB Off-Chain made its UK debut in London, with Lagos to follow in April. CKBoost completed a significant UI overhaul and its most rigorous live test to date, with mainnet progression now in sight.
Website Updates
The Nervos Community Catalyst website at nervoscatalyst.org has been updated to be more public-facing, providing clearer information for prospective participants across our various programmes. The site now includes a dedicated section for the Community Keeps Building initiative, with onboarding information for CKBuilders, as well as dedicated sections covering CKBoost and CKB Off-Chain. A new section has also been added for our AI scholarship initiative, which will be discussed further below.
Community Keeps Building
Onboarding
In Q1, we continued to make strong progress in expanding our developer base. The Community Keeps Building programme now has a total of 46 participants, of whom 44 are developers and 2 are content creators. Over the course of the quarter, we reduced our allocation to content creators to focus more directly on where momentum has been strongest: with the CKBuilders. Content creators who completed their tenure have been given guidance and support as they consider working towards Community Fund DAO grant proposals.
As in Q4, new developers came from two main sources:
- Our strategic partnership with TechyJaunt continued to bear fruit, yielding another cohort of developers, drawn particularly from Nigeria and Kenya.
- The developer referral bounty on the CKB Bounty Board proved highly effective, generating more than half of new entrants through word of mouth.
Many of the incoming developers bring prior blockchain experience across a range of ecosystems, including Ethereum, Solana, Cardano, Starknet, and Stellar, among others. The referral scheme has been successful enough to generate a waiting list of developers interested in joining. Looking ahead, I will be expanding the scope of the CKBuilders programme, opening up more slots and opportunities for developers to come onboard.
New challenges, new possibilities
The growth of the CKBuilders programme has created new opportunities, but also new challenges. Chief among these is how to effectively support and mentor an expanding cohort of developers at various stages of their learning journey.
A number of strategies have been developed to address this. Most notably, we have introduced a CKBuilder project hub, which provides a structured mechanism for developers to open issues on GitHub. These are then reviewed and delegated to experienced CKB developers, who provide feedback, suggestions, and technical guidance. This creates a more direct line between CKBuilders and the broader developer community, and ensures that builders are not left to navigate complex problems alone. I must thank @chenyukang for his help in facilitating this.
In addition to the support mechanism described above, there is a tracker (which I recommend bookmarking) that contains a live record of all projects currently being developed by CKBuilders, presented in tabulated form. In a change from previous quarterly reports, this table will serve as the primary resource for tracking project progress and developments, rather than individual written summaries. Going forward, each developer will be responsible for posting their own project introduction and progress on the forum - a process already underway. The table can be viewed below.
| Name | Project | Repository | Test link | Development status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Methemeticz | Verdict: prediction market | Link | https://verdict-three.vercel.app/ | Ongoing |
| Wadie | Eterna Registry: on-chain land registration | https://ckb-registry.vercel.app/ | Inactive | |
| RJnr | Pocket Node: light client android wallet | Link | https://www.pocket-node.com | Ongoing |
| Phill | Blackbox: POS terminal | Link | https://www.blackboxpos.com | Ongoing |
| Aditya | DripFund: crowdfunding | Link | https://dripfund.vercel.app/ | Implementing feedback |
| Naitik | CKB Arcade: minigames and lottery | Link | https://ckb-spintowin.vercel.app/ | Implementing feedback |
| Petelgeuse | CKB-PoP: proof of participation | Link | PoP - Proof of Presence Protocol | Implementing feedback |
| Oluwaseun | InheritVault: time-locked inheritance | Link | https://inherit-vault.vercel.app/ | Implementing feedback |
| Dragon Dev | Dragon Rush: 3 match game | Link | https://dragon-test.mememadness.xyz/ | Ongoing |
| Smilez | Cvent: Event ticketing | Link | https://cvent-chi.vercel.app/ | Demo complete |
| MorseCode | MintGate: gated communities | https://mint-gate.vercel.app/ | Ongoing | |
| Rick | CKB Kickstarter | Link | https://decentralized-kickstarter-kappa.vercel.app/ | Ongoing |
| Amine | CKB Node Manager | Link | Ongoing | |
| Chetan | ChainPress | Link | https://ckb-academy-progress.vercel.app/ | Awaiting feedback |
| Truthixify | Grid3 | Link | https://grid3-ckb.vercel.app/ | Awaiting feedback |
| Truthixify | Haven Protocol | Link | Awaiting feedback | |
| vibes | Ohrex Protocol | Link | Awaiting feedback | |
| Oluwaseun | PactAgent | Link | https://www.pactagent.online/ | Ongoing |
| Petelgeuse | NERVE | Link | https://nerve-docs.vercel.app/ | Ongoing |
| Destiny | Lean Oracle | Link | Ongoing | |
| Destiny | Lenderr | Link | Ongoing | |
| Williams | CKB Privacy Mixer | Link | Ongoing |
Project updates
For the sake of continuity, brief updates on previously introduced projects are provided below. As noted above, going forward each project will maintain its own dedicated forum thread for ongoing updates. You may have noticed this already with some projects:
- Building CKB PoP: a reusable participation primitive on CKB
- Introducing CKB Kickstarter: Decentralized All-or-Nothing Crowdfunding on Nervos CKB (Testnet MVP Live)
- Introducing DripFund - A Creator-First On-Chain Donation & Crowdfunding Platform (Testnet MVP Live)
- InheritVault - A Simple Timelock Inheritance Vault on Nervos CKB (Web MVP)
- Introducing Haven Protocol — Privacy Reputation on CKB
- Ohrex Protocol: Decentralized Token Launchpad with Auto-DEX Deployment on CKB - English - Nervos Talk
Blackbox. In Q1, Blackbox completed its testing programme under the Spark programme (completion report, testing overview). The results demonstrated a promising foundation, with clear areas identified for iteration on the path toward a market-facing product.
Following a short break after testing, attention turned to the development of open source hardware libraries, including the embedded builder for ESP32. Open sourcing at this level benefits the broader ecosystem by lowering the barrier to entry for hardware developers building on CKB, enabling others to reuse and build upon established components rather than starting from scratch. It also serves to streamline Blackbox’s own development going forward. A placeholder website is live at blackboxpos.com, with a reference page available on Wyltek Industries. Biweekly dev logs will be posted to keep the community up to date on progress.
PocketNode. PocketNode is a mobile-native Android wallet with an integrated light client, designed for minimal trust assumptions. In Q1, it became the first CKBuilder project to successfully secure a Community Fund DAO grant — a significant milestone for the programme. Development has progressed at a strong pace, with the project now closing in on its third milestone. PocketNode is available to view at pocket-node.com, and progress can be followed on its dedicated Nervos Talk thread.
Verdict and Eterna Registry have no major updates to report at this time. Both developers will share updates in their respective threads when news is forthcoming. In the meantime, their current status is reflected in the project tracker table above. As I haven’t heard about the latter project in a while, it is currently listed as inactive.
Two other projects mentioned last time are currently receiving and implementing feedback via the above tracker. “Buy me a coffee” is now DripFund, and “Spin to win” now hosts a few more different games as CKB Arcade.
Further contributions
The value added by CKBuilders can also be seen by the various issues they open on different repositories (1, 2, 3), or by the CKB learning resources they create spontaneously:
- Learn CKB in 45 Minutes — A Developer’s Fast Track Guide by @truthixify
- Lessons | Learning CKB by @Jnr6
CKB AI Scholarship
Over recent months, our use of AI as a development resource has grown substantially. The Share-AI platform - which gives CKBuilders access to otherwise paywalled AI models, providing more powerful tools better suited to intensive CKB development - now has over 30 registered developers.
The hackathon placed considerable strain on this platform, with usage regularly exceeding available limits even on the highest tier packages. This stress-tested the concept, raising important questions about scalability and how best to support developers as demand grows.
In response, we are pleased to announce the CKB AI Scholarship: a multi-tiered initiative to ensure that CKBuilders have the best AI tools at their disposal as they develop their applications. The scholarship operates across two levels: Level 1 provides access to the Share-AI platform for shared AI resources; Level 2 supports personal Claude accounts for more dedicated use, tied to specific performance and reporting requirements.
Hackathon success
In March, we organised the Claw & Order: CKB AI Agent Hackathon: a two-week event challenging developers to build autonomous, user-authorised AI agents leveraging CKB’s cell model and/or the Fiber Network. The event drew 25 participants and concluded with 22 project submissions spanning a remarkable range of categories: trading agents, coordination protocols, micropayment infrastructure, gaming referees, social tools, and more. All submissions were fully open-sourced, and have now been forked to the Nervos Community Catalyst Github, creating a permanent resource for the community.
The results were a strong signal for the health and trajectory of the CKB developer community. Of the 22 submissions, 16 came from CKBuilders - and the top two winning places were claimed by CKBuilders as well. This reflects how far AI has come in lowering the barriers to building on CKB, enabling developers who are relatively new to the ecosystem to produce serious, technically grounded work in a matter of weeks. The full results can be viewed here. The future of the CKB developer community looks brighter than ever.
CKB Off-Chain
CKB London. In February, CKB Off-Chain hosted its inaugural UK community meetup in collaboration with CryptoMondays London, bringing together CKB community members alongside local blockchain researchers, founders, developers, and enthusiasts. The evening centred on a keynote by @Alive24 entitled Quantum vs Blockchain: Existential Threat or Industry Myth?, which examined the realistic timelines for quantum risk, the vulnerabilities of existing cryptographic stacks, and how CKB’s flexibility-first, RISC-V based architecture transforms quantum resistance from a costly retrofit into a straightforward cryptographic upgrade. A fireside chat followed, exploring the broader governance and coordination challenges facing the industry. A full overview of the event can be found here.
The next CKB Off-Chain meetup is occurring in Lagos, Nigeria on Saturday 18th April 2026. It promises to be a great developer-focused event bringing together many of the CKBuilders and other local software developers, with a number of CKB projects to be presented.
CKBoost
In Q1, CKBoost received a significant visual UI upgrade, making for a considerably more polished and visually appealing experience. It also served as the live campaign management infrastructure for the CKB AI Agent Hackathon, providing a meaningful real-world test of both its campaign manager and user flows. The platform held up well under live conditions, with numerous bugs identified and resolved through the process. Overall reception from hackathon participants was positive, with the clean UI, ease of navigation, and gamified quest structure all noted favourably.
Prior to final completion of its third milestone and progression to mainnet, some targeted work remains: transaction cost optimisation, onboarding documentation and search functionality, and the resolution of outstanding GitHub issues. A number of further enhancements have also been logged for a future development round, including improvements to page load times, submission form UX, leaderboard visibility, and identity integration. A detailed post-hackathon testing and feedback report can be found on the CKBoost discussion thread. Credit to Alive24 for his continued work in developing the platform to this stage.
Looking Ahead
The past few months laid solid groundwork for what comes next. The priority for Q2 is to continue expanding the CKBuilders cohort, deepen mentorship and support structures, and encourage more projects to progress toward Community Fund DAO grant proposals. The CKB AI Scholarship will play an increasing role in equipping developers with the tools they need to push boundaries on CKB.
The benefits of growing our developer ranks are, I think, abundantly clear: more people experimenting, contributing, and innovating creates the conditions for lasting success, and brings us closer to unlocking what CKB is truly capable of.
CKB Off-Chain will continue its regional meetups, bringing together CKB supporters and strengthening community bonds, and CKBoost is expected to complete its final milestone and move to mainnet. Overall, there is good reason to be encouraged by the direction of travel.
As always, thanks to everyone involved across the various programmes for their hard work and commitment. For any queries, feel free to reach out on the forum, on Telegram, or at [email protected].