Exploring highly active, low-cost and further durable catalysts toward electrocatalytic hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) has become a research hotspot for investigators. VIII group transition metal phosphides (TMPs) gradually stand out due to their intriguing properties including low resistance, excellent catalytic activity and stability. Herein, we adopt an unconventional metal-organic framework (MOF) as precursor as well as an optimized pyrolytic strategy to fabricate a unique hybrid of bundled N-doped carbon nanowires confined small-sized cobalt phosphide (CoP) nanocrystals (CoP/NCNWs). As a HER catalyst, CoP/NCNWs hybrid exhibits excellent electrocatalytic activity with low overpotential and durable long-term stability in both acidic and alkaline solutions, respectively, which could be ascribed to the structural integrity of the hybrid and the synergetic effects between catalytically active CoP components and the protective N-doped carbon matrixes. Furthermore, the as-synthesized nanocomposite also presents favorable performances toward oxygen evolution reaction (OER). This research provides an operable strategy to construct low-dimensional carbonaceous materials coupled with TMPs using MOFs as precursor and shows the promising potential of multifunctional nanomaterials in electrocatalytic applications. (C) 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.