A method for performing verification is disclosed. The method includes selecting a set of gates to add to a first localization netlist and forming a refinement netlist. A min-cut is computed with sinks having one or more gates in the refinement netlist and sources comprising one or more inputs of an original netlist and one or more registers registers of the original netlist which are not part of the refinement netlist. A final localized netlist is obtained by adding one or more gates to the refinement netlist to grow the refinement netlist until reaching one or more cut-gates of the min-cut.