Nervos Community Catalyst: Quarterly Reports

General
7

Q3 2026 Report

Executive summary

Q3 brought further growth across Nervos Community Catalyst’s developer programmes and community activity. CKBuilders grew to close to 100 active builders and alumni, while Build on CKB campaigns continued to challenge developers to advance their CKB skills. The project tracker expanded from 45 projects at the end of Q2 to 59 by the beginning of October, and 18 projects were submitted for review during the quarter. The Gone in 60ms Fiber Network Infrastructure Hackathon brought together roughly 100 participants and received 66 submissions.

Alongside supporting individual developers and projects, NCC saw interest from teams outside the CKB ecosystem and strengthened in-person connections through CKB Off-Chain with events in Nairobi, Vietnam, and elsewhere. CKBoost reached around 150 users, generating testing data, bug reports and feedback to inform its next stage.

Community Keeps Building

CKBuilders

CKBuilders continued to grow in Q3, with over 25 new builders joining, predominantly from Vietnam and Indonesia. We have prioritised expanding to new regions that have thriving blockchain communities in order to continue building global awareness of CKB. The number of active CKBuilders and alumni now stands at close to 100.

Alumni are developers who have completed the programme and remain part of the CKBuilders peer learning group. Those who continue to build retain access to our shared AI resources, while some alumni have progressed to projects supported by the Spark Programme or the Community Fund DAO.

The programme design allows us to continue to grow efficiently, bringing more developers into the community without creating a dependency or increasing overheads. The key is to continue to spread CKB to new developers and enrich our community with fresh perspectives and opportunities.

Build on CKB

Build on CKB is the Telegram group for all new community developers, where they can get started with building on CKB through campaigns based on introductory tutorials. During Q3, numerous campaigns were completed, as listed on CKBoost:

  • Build on CKB Campaign 03: Build a Simple Lock tutorial. 25 participants
  • Build on CKB Campaign 04: Create a DOB tutorial. 20 participants
  • Build on CKB Campaign 05: Create a Fungible Token. 20 participants
  • Build on CKB Campaign 06: Fiber startup and test payment. 24 participants.

For the most recent campaign, I must thank the DevRel team for collaborating to deliver it, and to @yuqi for its design and execution.

Future activities will center around new campaigns focused on Fiber. We will also periodically revisit previous campaigns so newer group entrants can still participate at a level comfortable for them.

Developer articles

As their understanding of CKB deepens, CKBuilders have added further articles to the Knowledge Base, exploring interesting questions or reflecting on the developer experience:

Project tracker

The CKBuilder project tracker grew from 45 projects at the end of Q2 to 59 by the beginning of October. The new entries covered a wide range of work, including developer tools, prediction markets, games, credentials, time-locked vaults and payment infrastructure.

Examples include LS-IDL, a tool for describing lock script interfaces; CKB Script Port, for transferring synced script data between light-client installations; noir-ckb, exploring proof-bound CKB transactions; and LucentDEx, an order-book exchange prototype. The tracker also added projects such as a Fiber-based survival game, a football prediction market and Klavernoq, a work marketplace built on PactAgent infrastructure.

Additionally, 18 projects were submitted for review through the CKBuilder review request page in Q3. The review process has proved to be a valuable source of feedback to developers as they refine their ideas and designs, so I must thank everyone who has participated in helping to conduct reviews.

Whilst many projects remain prototypes or works in progress, publishing them in one place makes the breadth of experimentation visible and gives community members a starting point for following or testing projects, or inspiration for their own ideas. Importantly, as I mention in my conclusion, renewed emphasis must be given towards creating projects which have sound business, as well as technical, rationale.

Progression to Community Fund DAO

In Q3, Fiber Desktop by @ebubedev and FiberLatch by @Ticoworld completed their proposed development, and continue to be maintained.

Vellum, the DID and reputation protocol built on did:ckb by @truthixify, passed the governance process on its second attempt and its work is ongoing.

Other proposals include:

Teams come to CKB

Alongside the growth of individual builders, we have seen increased interest from external teams willing to explore building on CKB.

  • Lucent Labs, a team from Cardano and Midnight, is developing an open-source order-book DEX proof of concept.
  • Kaze, a team working with Bitcoin and Lightning, is exploring the integration of CKB and Fiber into its geolocation rewards app.
  • TexLabs, also from Cardano and Midnight, is exploring the intersection of AI and payment channels, as well as CKB payments over Lightning.

Gone in 60ms: Building Fiber Infrastructure

The Gone in 60ms Fiber Network Infrastructure Hackathon ran through July. It attracted roughly 100 participants and received 66 submissions across three categories: wallet and payment UX; node, routing, cross-chain and diagnostics infrastructure; and merchant, liquidity, LSP and multi-asset infrastructure. Clasp was named the overall winner, with Fiber Forge and FiberNuts taking first place in their respective categories

The submissions included practical infrastructure for controlling app access to Fiber nodes, setting up local Fiber development networks, and enabling Cashu-based assets to settle over Fiber. The results showed a substantial volume of work focused on reusable tools and infrastructure.

Creating long-lasting endeavours

One objective of hackathons is to produce new projects and ideas that leave a lasting contribution to the ecosystem. Whilst there are numerous projects with some level of work ongoing, two in particular stand out at this stage:

Klaveroq is being developed on PactAgent infrastructure as a jobs marketplace supported by agent-mediated workflow and escrow on CKB. PactAgent won the previous Claw & Order AI Agent Hackathon, and Klaveroq is an example of a project building a product on top of that work.

FiberNuts, the first-place project in the hackathon’s third category, is continuing to work towards a viable implementation, having created a FiberNuts Community Market. This demo shows how Cashu and Fiber could support small event payments. Attendees add RUSD ecash through Fiber, then use it to pay vendors; vendors can later cash out through Fiber.

Adapting to growth

A key challenge for NCC will be adapting its operating capacity to the scale of these programmes. As participation grows, we will need to continue improving communication, organisation, developer mentorship, the developer experience and our tracking of community activity.

CKB Off-Chain

Nairobi

Following the first Africa-based CKB Off-Chain meetup in Lagos, we continued building connections in East Africa with the Nairobi meetup on 18 July, held in collaboration with Web3Clubs. Around 45 people attended, including local CKBuilders, developers already familiar with CKB and people encountering the ecosystem for the first time. CKBuilders and other contributors presented their work, while discussion highlighted interest in stablecoins, local payment systems and the potential for Fiber in the Kenyan market. The event helped strengthen existing relationships and introduced CKB to developers in Nairobi.

Hanoi

Just after the close of Q3, CKB Off-Chain Hanoi took place on 8 October at Nguyen Trai University, in collaboration with BPS Club and Tex Labs. The event brought together Vietnamese CKBuilders, software developers, students and faculty members. Local builders presented projects and shared their experience, alongside sessions on CKB fundamentals, post-quantum cryptography, hardware wallets and Fiber. It was the first CKB Off-Chain event in Vietnam centred on CKBuilders and their experiences, and represents an initial step towards further developer engagement and education in the region.

Community-led events

A notable development is that CKB community developers are beginning to organise events of their own. Recent examples include:

  • Kaze Uni tour, Mombasa: Held at the Technical University of Mombasa in August, the event introduced students to Bitcoin, CKB and self-custody. Around 95% of attendees were new to Bitcoin, and 58 created CKB wallets and tried Kaze’s location-based rewards app. Organised by the Kaze team.
  • CKB Off-Chain Aba: Held on 3 October with Abia Web3 Network, the meetup featured presentations on RIVET, CKB IDL and Freight on Nervos, and connected local developers to CKB, with good turnout despite heavy rain. Organised by @Jedi_dtechmaker
  • CKB community meetup, Kisumu: Another community-organised meetup took place in Kisumu on October 16, with a write-up still to come. Organised by @Fidelcoder

We will continue to support community developer events in Nigeria, Kenya and Vietnam, while exploring new locations where groups of CKBuilders are developing.

CKBoost

With the ongoing Build on CKB campaigns and Fiber hackathon mentioned above, CKBoost has continued to build a developer user base, now numbering at around 150. The priority this quarter was to build CKBoost’s user base, validating the its usefulness as a campaign platform. This has facilitated valuable testing data, bug reports and feedback that helps inform the next stage of CKBoost development. The focus for CKBoost moving forward will be to improve the UX, remove points of friction, and refine the design to make it viable for mainnet. As ever, thanks to @Alive24 for his continued work on this.

Looking forward

NCC’s next phase will focus on supporting this growth with stronger communication, organisation, developer mentorship, developer experience and tracking of community activity. This will allow community activities to be more visible internally and externally. Planning will begin for the next Fiber hackathon, focusing on products and market-facing applications. Linked to this is the challenge of helping builders progress from demo creation and community grants towards market strategy and business viability. This will be a key concern to address in future.

We will support community developer events in Nigeria, Kenya and Vietnam, while exploring new locations where CKBuilder groups are developing, in particular South East Asia. We will also support builders as their projects develop and, where appropriate, progress through the Community Fund DAO and other ecosystem pathways.

19 Likes