UTXO: The Unconventional Anticipation of Bitcoin’s Ecosystem

The Cell in Nervos CKB is similar to a more intelligent UTXO. Bitcoin UTXO is like a box containing a paper ledger, while a Cell replaces the ledger in the box with an Excel electronic document. Nervos CKB inherits the architecture of Bitcoin UTXO and creates the Cell Model, which is a general UTXO model used for state storage, maintaining the simplicity and consistency of UTXO. In CKB, all states are stored in Cells, and computations are performed off-chain and validated and placed on-chain by nodes. Cells represent the basic data storage unit in Nervos and, unlike Bitcoin UTXO, they can contain various data types such as CKByte, Token, JavaScript code, or JSON strings. This richer set of data types expands the capabilities of Cells, enabling the extension of UTXO, such as the implementation of smart contracts (including customized smart contracts, for example, issuing NFT tokens, limiting token supply, and specifying usage conditions to meet unique requirements).