Questions about CKBA

General
1

I’d like to better understand how CKB is organized. I hope someone can clarify the following:
Does CKB have an official team or teams responsible for its development and ecosystem?
What are the names of these teams?
Who leads each team?
Who are the members of each team?
What are the responsibilities of each team?
What are the responsibilities of each key individual?
How are team leaders selected, and what criteria are used?
How are responsibilities divided across the different teams?
I believe this information would help the community better understand how CKB is organized, who is responsible for each area, and how the ecosystem is coordinated.
Best regards.

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Who Governs CKB?
2

yes more information can be shared about CKBA execution teams next week, appreciate your question

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Thank you, Matt. I appreciate the update and look forward to learning more about the CKBA execution teams next week.

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4

Just for reference.

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5

Thanks for laying this out so clearly. It’s a fair set of questions, and honestly the kind we want to be asked. For years, the work on CKB was split across multiple entities, and one side effect was that even simple questions like “who is responsible for what” was difficult for anyone to answer. Bringing the diverse contributors together under the Association was meant to fix that, so here’s the current picture in one place.

The teams

CKB (lead: @chenyukang) maintains CKB node and other critical code bases. This covers node development, protocol maintenance, performance work, and releases. Given CKB’s conservative approach at the protocol layer, much of this work is about stability and reliability rather than constant change.

CKB-VM (lead: Jiandong @xjd) develops CKB’s RISC-V virtual machine CKB VM. This is the layer that makes CKB’s flexibility possible, since the VM is what allows new verification logic, including new cryptographic primitives, to be deployed permissionlessly.

Fiber (lead: @quake) builds the Fiber Network, a Lightning-compatible payment channel network on CKB. Current work includes improving the stack and documentation, advancing Lightning interoperability and liquidity management, and removing blockers for adoption.

Acceptance (lead: @guopeng_lin) covers testing, quality assurance, and release acceptance across the stack, along with DevOps. This team ensures that all releases are working well and free of issues.

Developer Relations (leads: @RetricSu and @Hanssen) supports the people building on CKB: documentation, onboarding, technical support, and the developer community channels. If you’ve asked a technical question in our channels, someone from this team likely answered it.

Communication (lead: @Stefan_CKBA) handles content, brand, the Knowledge Base, social channels, and campaigns. The recent crypto agility campaign came from here, and improving how consistently and clearly we communicate is one of the concrete things the Association restructure was meant to enable.

Research (lead: Ren @nirenzang) works on protocol and cryptography research, ensures CKB is representing in academia through papers and presentations to academic conferences on topics relevant to CKB and major blockchains.

Ecosystem Support (lead: @zz_tovarishch) maintains relationships with ecosystem projects, bridges the English and Chinese speaking communities, and keeps information flowing between builders and teams. Much of what this team does is invisible when it works: context moving to where it’s needed.

Operations (lead: @matt_ckb ) covers finance, administration, and coordination across all of the above.

How the teams stay coordinated

All teams have regular standing meetings and cross-team syncs and a monthly all hands. The ecosystem has always been bigger than any single organization, and we intend to keep it that way. There is a monthly coordination call with ecosystem developers.

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handles for Ren: @nirenzang and Jiandong: @xjd

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The answers are clear, and I hope that over time the remaining important points can also be clarified, such as:
How are team leaders selected?
Who selects them, and what criteria are used?
Who has overall responsibility for coordinating the different teams?
Do these teams collectively represent CKBA’s operational responsibilities, or does CKBA also have additional responsibilities beyond these teams, with its own leadership and clearly defined roles?
Is there a dedicated team responsible for building partnerships with external organizations? If so, what is the name of that team, and who leads it?
Is there a team or individual responsible for maintaining and updating CKB’s official websites?
Does each team operate with its own independent budget, or is the budget managed centrally?
These are just a few examples, not a complete list of questions. They are the kind of things that many people who are interested in CKB would like to understand.
Thank you once again for taking the time to provide such a thoughtful and informative response to my questions. I truly appreciate it.

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8

Thank you for providing this overview.

I noticed that the people commonly known as the co-founders of Nervos/CKB—Jan Xie, Terry Tai, Kevin Wang, Daniel Lv and Cipher Wang—are not listed among the leads of CKBA’s execution teams.

I understand that this post may only list the current execution-team leads, rather than the Board, Contributing Members, advisers, employees, or individual contributors. Therefore, their absence from this list does not necessarily mean that they have left CKBA or the wider CKB ecosystem.

Could CKBA please clarify:

  1. Do any of the co-founders currently hold a formal role in CKBA—for example as a Board member, Contributing Member, adviser, employee, or individual contributor?

  2. If none of them currently holds a formal role, have they formally left the former Nervos Foundation/CKBA structure?

  3. Regardless of their formal CKBA status, which of the co-founders remain active in the CKB ecosystem, and in what capacity?

This clarification would help the community avoid confusing “not being an execution-team lead” with “having left the project.” Thank you.

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9

Speaking only for myself: I’m a contributing member of CKBA. I regularly participate in the General Assembly, but I’m not involved in CKBA’s day-to-day operations. My conviction in CKB—and my commitment to it—remain as strong as ever. As an independent contributor, I’m currently working on CKBadger and a few other exploratory ideas.

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10

Thanks to Jan for clarifying that he is a Contributing Member of CKBA.

I haven’t seen a response from CKBA or the other CKB founders, so I’m going to keep this simple and ask one concrete question at a time.

As a CKB holder, I need reliable public information to assess governance continuity, key-person risk, and the long-term health of the project. The published operations roster tells us who is doing the day-to-day work, but it does not tell us who holds formal governance authority.

Who currently serves on the CKBA Board?

Please provide the names and formal roles of all current Board members, along with an official source and the date the information was last updated. If CKBA has chosen not to make this information public, please state that clearly and explain why.

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11

Kevin left the project to work on Khalani a few years ago, Daniel has not been engaged for some time. He was always the China community guy; I think it just became too difficult to work in that capacity as the environment changed over the years.

Terry is a Contributing Member of CKBA and is managing the forum. Cipher has not been active since UTXO Stack wound down.

Myself, @neon.bit and @wyltek constitute the board, I serve as President. Aspiring toward handling this kind of response through official means.. work in progress.

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12

Thanks, Matt. That helps.

Since you mentioned that handling these responses through official channels is still a work in progress, I think the most useful next step would be to create a durable, official source of governance information rather than leaving it scattered across individual forum posts.

Member-based organizations generally distinguish between their governing bodies and their operating teams. They also make it reasonably clear who holds formal responsibility for the organization.

Would CKBA publish and maintain an official governance page identifying the people formally responsible for governing and managing the association—including their names, roles, brief professional backgrounds, areas of responsibility, and term dates?

This is not a request for private personal information. It is basic institutional transparency that would help CKB holders understand who is responsible for CKBA and how the organization is governed.

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13

The Contributing Members govern the association, the Board follows their direction. There are not formal bodies established at this time, the execution team list encompasses all current association activities.

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14

Thanks, Matt. That clarifies the chain of authority.

If the Contributing Members govern the association and the Board acts under their direction, then the Contributing Members are effectively CKBA’s highest decision-making group.

Who are the current Contributing Members of CKBA?

A list of names or established community identities would be sufficient. I’m not asking for private personal information—only for the identities of the people who currently hold governance authority within the association.

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15

Hi Aryastark,

We currently have 15 contributing members. We’re gathering everyone’s basic information right now and will have a formal public page up as soon as possible. The members are (sort alphabetically):

  1. Arthur Zhang @ArthurZhang
  2. Echo Qi
  3. Hanssen @Hanssen
  4. Hongzhou @zz_tovarishch
  5. Jan Xie @janx
  6. Jane
  7. Jr @Jnr6
  8. KevinTckb @kevtam515
  9. Matt @matt_ckb
  10. Neon @neon.bit
  11. Phill @wyltek
  12. Random Walk @keith
  13. Shawn @NightLantern
  14. Terry @terrytai
  15. Vicky Zhang

Contributing membership will keep expanding. You can check out the next cycle for details.

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It seems these are legitimate questions? In any case, I’m glad that NN can now present this professional and transparent image to the outside world! Let’s go!

Is there a way for me to sign up for a membership without having to create a Google account? Maybe CKBA could send me an email to the address I’ve set up in my forum profile here?

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17

Hi knom,

Regarding contributing member applications, we collect them via Google Forms whenever a new cycle opens. I’ll make sure your feedback is added to the agenda for the next contributing member discussion before we kick off the new cycle.

As for general members, joining isn’t application-based. You can go to the CKBA website Common Knowledge Base Association - CKBA, enter your email to request to join, and the backend team will receive it directly. After that, any future updates for general members will be sent straight to your inbox via the mailing list.

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18

Thanks , this helps.

Since Contributing Members govern CKBA and the group will keep growing, how are new members added, and how can a member be removed?

If this is covered in the bylaws, a link would be appreciated.

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For information regarding the new contributing member selection, please check this thread.

We will share further details soon. Thank you for your interest.

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Thanks, that gives me a better sense of how people join.

What I’m still trying to understand is what being a Contributing Member actually means in practice. Beyond voting, what authority do members have, and what are they accountable for?