Nervos Network (CKB) extends rally with peak Upbit trading activity

Nervos Network (CKB) went through an almost vertical rally this week, after a recent Upbit listing. Volumes on the South Korean exchange keep propping up the asset, causing temporary price disparities. 

Nervos Network (CKB) was the latest token to pop off, speeding ahead of the market’s recovery. CKB peaked at $0.020, but price action remains strong. In the past week, CKB also carried a premium on Upbit, rising as high as $0.04 in the Korean won equivalent. 

CKB rallied by more than 113% in the past week, doubling its trading volumes to nearly $600M in a single day. The asset, with its relatively low price, may have an even greater breakout, as its all-time peak is only at $0.036. 

Binance suspended CKB withdrawals again

Just after the Upbit trading, Binance withdrawals of CKB were suspended. Users complained of not being able to move their coins. In the past, Binance has suspended CKB withdrawals during turbulent times. 

This time around, Binance saw a surge in withdrawals right before suspending CKB, possibly due to a backlog of transactions. The first news of suspended transactions appeared in the past week, just before the CKB rally. At that time, CKB was already trading at a premium on some exchanges, with the potential for arbitrage. Bybit was also offering double the Binance rates, but not all traders managed to withdraw. 

As a result of the sudden spike in trading, open interest on CKB expanded by a factor of 10, to $74.75M. Soon after the price rally, short positions also expanded as high as 60%, while causing a spike in lending fees. The CKB rally may thus either crash and fulfill the short positions, or go for an even bigger short squeeze.  

About a week after its launch, CKB already equalized its price on most trading pairs. Trading volumes were highly active, and Upbit took up more than 64% of all CKB activity.

The last time Binance suspended CKB withdrawals was in April, which coincided with the asset’s local price peak. Binance explained that the limitation on moving coins was due to congestion on the Nervos Network, caused by the minting of assets on the RGB++ protocol.

Nervos Network competes with L2 chains

Nervos Network is a relatively small project that combines native L1 and L2 modules. The project started trading in 2020, entering the space just as rollup layer-2 solutions were also growing. For that reason, Nervos achieved niche status and somewhat lower popularity. Despite this, CKB became a top 100 token.  

Nervos is not EVM-compatible, and is thus cut off from Ethereum’s liquidity in the form of bridged ETH or stablecoins. Despite this, Nervos has tried building a native infrastructure, with Yokai Swap as its main DEX. 

Nervos is also among the rare mined niche chains, seeing some support from big mining operations like F2Pool and Antpool. For now, the mining of CKB is relatively slow, with no influencer marketing. The chain has been growing mostly on organic hype, while the CKB token relies on centralized trading and enjoys highly liquid listings on top exchanges. 

One of the reasons for the slow mining is that Nervos is compatible with some of the top GPU processors. Nervos uses the Eaglesong algorithm, requiring a different set of equipment, often more accessible for large mining farms. 

The investment in GPU power goes toward AI tasks, leaving Nervos as a tradable asset. Specialized Nervos miners are also a big upfront investment, more suitable for long-term network supporters. 

Nervos offers both L1 and L2 building models

Nervos Network carries its own L1 mined layer, as well as a scalable L2 environment. The most common type of application on Nervos is infrastructure, allowing the inclusion of other features. 

Nervos carries Celer Network and Ankr versions, offering a mix of scalable tokenization and proof-of-work security. Nervos Network also functions as a DAO, which requires a minimal lockup period of 30 days for CKB, with a 2.65% annualized gains.

One of the functions of the DAO is to encourage locking up the tokens, while receiving a compensation for network inflation. Nervos has combined diminishing mining rewards with secondary issue of CKB, highly encouraging users to hold funds in the DAO for the long term. 

The only L2 app on Nervos is Godwoken, capable of wrapping the native CKB token for the Ethereum chain. Nervos also carries a small ecosystem of DeFi lending and two main DEXs. 

Cryptopolitan reporting by Hristina Vasileva