How Transaction Fees Work on the Nervos Network

Fee Structure and Mechanism

Nervos Network's Layer 1, called the Common Knowledge Base (CKB), uses a unique approach to transaction fees and state management:

Transaction fees are paid in CKByte (CKB), the network's native token. Users must pay transaction fees to have their transactions included in blocks. The fees are distributed as part of miners' block rewards, providing an incentive for miners to validate and secure the network1 2.
CKB aims to optimize for long-term state storage rather than just transaction throughput. This means users essentially pay for both the execution of each transaction and the "state rent"—the cost of storing data on-chain. This subscription-like state rent is paid to miners and incentivized through token issuance and fee distribution3 4.

Fee Calculation: The transaction fee is primarily determined by the size of the transaction and prevailing network conditions. While CKB’s model is focused on state occupation, the transaction fee mechanism is still proportional to the computational and storage resources required by each transaction3.
Distribution: Collected fees are split as follows:
- A portion goes directly to miners for block validation and network security.
- Another portion may support treasury and ecosystem development, depending on protocol configuration1 2.

Recent Data: In Q4 2024, the total transaction fees on Nervos Network declined sharply due to decreased network activity:
- Approximately 36,200 CKB were paid as total fees for the quarter (a 94% decline quarter-over-quarter).
- In USD terms, total fees collected were about $462 for all processed transactions in the quarter (a 93% decline quarter-over-quarter).
- Data for average fee per transaction for the most recent day or week was not available; however, using available metrics and dividing, the average fee per transaction remained extremely low compared to major networks1.

Nervos DAO & Long-term Holder Protection: To protect long-term holders from inflation, Nervos offers the Nervos DAO, allowing users to lock CKB and receive issuance rewards. This offsets the "state tax" effect for those not running active transactions but simply holding CKB5.
Layered Structure: While Layer 1 focuses on security and state preservation (with higher costs), most transaction execution and scaling occurs on Layer 2, which supports much lower and sometimes negligible fees for end-users3 4.

Aspect	Nervos CKB Layer 1
Native Fee Token	CKByte (CKB)
Fee Basis	Transaction size and network state occupation
Miner Reward Mix	Block issuance + collected transaction fees
Avg. Quarterly Fee (Q4)	~36,200 CKB / ~$462 (Total, not per transaction)
Long-term Storage	“State rent” model; DAO mitigates long-term holder impact