CKB, an abbreviation of CKBytes, is the native token of Nervos Common Knowledge Base blockchain. One CKB entitles one byte of data storage on the blockchain, and is used to pay transaction and computation fees.
All applications running on Nervos Common Knowledge Base blockchain need to pay the state storage rent to miners in terms of CKB, and the CKB being occupied forego the annual inflation rewards from the secondary issuance.
E.g. Mid-sized app,1000 lines of code,50 bytes/line,$0.01/CKByte
It would be $500 for upfront state storage cost if they were to purchase the CKB.
This is comparable to what Internet startups would pay for cloud computing services in the early stage.
Alternatively, they can rent CKB for months or a year to test the water and only invest to purchase permanent storage when there's traction. That would cost about $10 a month.
Beyond that - say the CKB price goes another 100x from there, it likely then be used more for global settlement and the bulk of application logic would then move to upper layers.
CKB issuance is made up of three parts:
A total of 33.6 billion CKB is created in the genesis block:
35.5% sold via token sales + 25% burned on mainnet launch + 17% reserved for a ecosystem fund + 15% owned by team (check token distribution for details)
16.8 billion CKBytes— first four years
8.4 billion CKBytes— following four years...
Learn more details→ Nervos’s token-economic paper: