Abstract: In order to explore the accident rules and key causes of coal mine gas explosion, 112 gas explosion accidents from 2011 to 2022 were collected and their distribution characteristics were statistically analyzed. Secondly, 63 accident causes were extracted based on the grounded theory, and the accident evolution model was constructed based on the complex network theory. The key causes were identified with the analytic hierarchy process, and the risk degree of connecting edge was introduced to explore the high-risk connecting edge. Finally, the main evolutionary path of the accident is constructed, and the chain breaking measures are proposed. The results show that major accidents are the key to prevention and control, and accidents are easy to occur before and after the shift, key causes were chaos of safety management and illegal blasting, high-risk link is illegal blasting to open fire, chain breaking measures can reduce the correlation between causes and prolong the accident path.