Æternity ranks #205 of 504 cryptocurrencies. On a list that also counts tokens, memecoins, wrapped coins, staked derivatives and stablecoins it appears at #1614: 1409 of the 1613 assets ahead of it are not native coins but tokens or claims. A token is issued on a host blockchain rather than running its own; a claim stands for an asset already counted. Of the 1856 non-native assets CoinSpectrum lists above it by market cap, about 76% are tokens, 19% are claims on other assets and 5% are memecoins.
| CoinSpectrum Grade | B · 67/100 · provisional |
|---|---|
| Rank among cryptocurrencies | #205 |
| Rank counting claims | #1614 |
| Market capitalisation | $2M |
| Price | $0.00548 |
| Circulating supply | 385,106,898 AE |
| Maximum supply | 536,306,702 AE |
| Consensus family | Proof of Work |
| Consensus mechanism | Cuckoo Cycle |
| Own hashrate | 3.00 kH/s |
| Network purpose | Smart-contract platform |
| Ledger type | Multi-asset ledger |
| Launch distribution | Presale |
Market figures from the 28 October 2026 build. Open the live view for every exchange's price, and charts.
B — 67 out of 100, provisional (from 18 of 20 criteria, 28 October 2026 build). With what is not yet measured anywhere from nothing to full marks, the score would be 60 to 71 (C to B).
| Criterion | Score | Basis |
|---|---|---|
| Leading Consensus Mechanisms (Source) | 10 | group average |
| Consensus: leader ladder | 10 | Proof of work: 10 of 10 on the ladder of consensus families ranked by their largest chain's market cap |
| Consensus: family ladder | 10 | Proof of work: 10 of 10 on the ladder of families ranked by the combined market cap of their chains |
| Cryptocurrency Standards (Source) | 5.8 | group average, 10 of 12 measured |
| Sound Money Properties (6 checks) (Source) | 7.8 | 3.9 of 5 points, 1 not yet measured source |
| Scarcity (Limited supply · 1 Store of value · Whitepaper §6) | 9.1 | fixed maximum supply of 536 million: supply scale 8.1, cap 10 |
| Durability (Sustainability · 1 Store of value) | ✓ | 9 full years since its first recorded price, no halt, freeze or reversal in five years |
| Fungibility (Interchangeability · 3 Unit of account) | ✓ | every unit identical and worth any other |
| Portability (Scalability · 2 Medium of exchange) | ✗ | typical fee $1.1e-7; about 107 transactions a second, 4.8 on the throughput scale (5 is the busiest networks' median demand) |
| Divisibility (Flexibility · 3 Unit of account) | ✓ | 18 decimal places, the smallest unit worth $5.5e-21 |
| Verifiability (Authenticity check · 1 Store of value · Whitepaper §8) | – | node software open source |
| Scalability (fees, throughput, block time, block space, features) | 6.6 | average of 5 parts source |
| Fees ($0.001 or less 10, $1 or more 0) | 10 | typical fee $1.1e-7 |
| Throughput (2,478 a second, the busiest network's peak day, 10; 119, the median of the ten busiest, 5) | 4.8 | about 107 simple transactions a second |
| Block time (10 minutes 10, less either side) | 8.1 | a block every 3 minutes |
| Block space per 10 minutes (32 MB or more 10) | 10 | 18 MB limit (converted from its gas, compute, mass or count limit), 59.9 MB per 10 minutes |
| Features (3 checks) | 0 | 0 of 2 passed, 1 not yet researched |
| Fast payments (Safe to accept within seconds · Whitepaper §11) | ✗ | Bitcoin-NG: microblocks every ~3 s are signed by the current leader but can be dropped by the next key block; settlement relies on 3-minute PoW key blocks with probabilistic confirmation. |
| Pruned nodes (Old history dropped, every rule checked · Whitepaper §7) | – | State garbage collection exists, but whether nodes can drop old blocks was not established. |
| Light clients (Payments verified from headers · Whitepaper §8) | ✗ | No light-client protocol; SDKs trust node APIs. |
| Security (miner pay and 7 checks) | 4 | 4 of 9 points source |
| Miner pay (A day, $1,000 0 to $10 million 10; 2 points) | 0 | about $84 a day |
| Own hashrate (Half its algorithm's largest, not merge-mined) | ✓ | |
| Largest pool (Pool or validator under 50%) | ✗ | 75.85% |
| Largest three (Under 75% together) | ✗ | 99.85% |
| Clients (More than one maintained) | ✗ | 1 |
| Open source (Node software) | ✓ | The only node (aeternity/aeternity, ISC licence) and the protocol roadmap (hard forks, hyperchains) are run by the Aeternity Foundation / aeternity Crypto Foundation and its funded core team. |
| Real use (1,000+ transactions a day) | ✓ | about 99,906 a day |
| No 51% attack (Nor a deep reorganisation, five years) | ✓ | |
| Decentralisation | 6.2 | section average, 6 of 8 measured |
| Censorship resistant (Source) | 10 | No authority can halt the chain or freeze funds: No protocol key can freeze or claw back AE; after the 2020-21 51% attacks the foundation asked exchanges to lock stolen funds, an off-chain action. Nodes reject gossiped forks more than 5 blocks below the top by default (fork resistance), which is not a party's halt power. source |
| No central team (Source) | 0 | A central team directs it: The only node (aeternity/aeternity, ISC licence) and the protocol roadmap (hard forks, hyperchains) are run by the Aeternity Foundation / aeternity Crypto Foundation and its funded core team. source |
| Who can mint (Source) | 10 | Proof of work: 10 of 10 on the ladder of who produces blocks |
| Nodes (Source) | — | Not yet counted |
| Holder concentration (Source) | — | Not yet measured |
| Premine (allocated at launch) | 3.8 | 61.7% of today's supply allocated at launch to founders, a company, a foundation or investors. The entire ERC-20 supply, 273,685,830 AE (Etherscan max total supply), was allocated before mainnet: 82% to sale contributors, 17% to founders, company and foundation, 1% airdrop. It migrated into the mainnet genesis and later hard forks. Against the current total of 443.44M (aeternity middleware, 2026-10-23), that is 61.7%. This is a lower bound: the 2019 Block Reward Initiative redirected a share of mining rewards to the æternity Crypto Foundation (dev_reward), not summed here. source |
| Fundraising | 3.8 | Sold by its issuer or insiders: 61.7% of supply was theirs to sell, 50.6% sold so far. Contribution campaign 2017. Phase 1 (Apr 3-6): 120,827 ETH + 328.6 BTC at 1,000 AE/ETH. Phase 2 (from May 29): cap CHF 21M at 650-750 AE/ETH. Contributors hold 82% x 273.7M = 224.4M; 224.4 / 443.4 = 50.6%. source |
| Developer share (after launch) | 9.7 | Developer share: about 2.7% of today's supply received so far; no share of new block rewards today. Block Reward Initiative: 10.9% (109/1000 shares) of each key block's coinbase went to the æternity Crypto Foundation from the Fortuna fork (block 90,800, Apr 2019) through Iris; it ended at Ceres (block 941,700, 2024). Coinbase over blocks 90,800-941,699 = 110.70M AE (aec_coinbase) × 10.9% = 12.07M AE = 2.7% of 443.45M (middleware total_token_supply). Today the coinbase goes wholly to miners. source |
| Privacy | 2 | section average |
| Privacy (5 checks) | 2 | 1 of 5 passed source |
| Protocol level privacy (Keys not tied to an identity · Whitepaper §10) | ✓ | Accounts are created from keys users generate themselves; transfers are validated by signature, with no identity condition in the protocol. |
| UTXO ledger (A new key for each payment · Whitepaper §2, §9) | ✗ | |
| Network privacy (Origin hidden by default) | ✗ | aeternity node gossips transactions directly; no Dandelion or Tor. |
| Hidden amounts (Amounts confidential) | ✗ | Balances and transfers are public. |
| Hidden parties (Sender and receiver hidden) | ✗ | Sender and receiver accounts are public. |
| Programmability (tokens, contracts, 5 checks) | 7.8 | 7 of 9 points source |
| Token issuance (At protocol level) | 2 | Sophia smart contracts on its FATE VM, open to any account, carry AEX-9 fungible tokens. |
| Smart contracts (General-purpose) | 2 | Sophia contracts on the FATE VM, open to any account, plus generalized accounts, state channels and oracles in the protocol. |
| Multisig and time locks (Without a third party) | ✓ | Generalized accounts attach a contract that authorises transactions (multi-signature schemes named in the docs), and Sophia contracts can check block height and time. |
| Atomic swaps (With other chains) | ✓ | Sophia contracts can express hash-locked, time-locked escrow. |
| Native exchange (Built into the protocol) | ✗ | No exchange in the protocol; Superhero DEX is a contract set. |
| Cross-chain messaging (Verified by the chain itself) | ✗ | The ÆRC bridge to Ethereum is a separate service, and Hyperchains anchor child chains to a parent rather than verifying messages from other chains on the æternity mainnet. |
| NFTs (Carried by the chain's rules) | ✓ | AEX-141 NFT contracts on FATE. |
| Supply & Demand | 5.3 | group average |
| Supply & Demand (Source) | 2.5 | average of 6 measures |
| Exchanges (10 or more: 10) | 1 | 1 exchange |
| Daily volume ($10K 0, $1B or more 10) | 0 | $424 traded in 24 hours; #3597 by volume on the exchanges the site reads (scored on the median day of the last 30, $425) |
| Turnover (volume ÷ market cap, 5% a day: 10) | 0 | 0.02% of its market cap a day, median of the last 30 days |
| Order-book depth (bids and asks within 2% ÷ market cap, 1%: 10) | 3.3 | $206 within 2% of the price on 1 exchange, 0.01% of its market cap, median of the last 2 days |
| Market cap ($1M 0, $10B or more 10) | 0.8 | $2.1M, 0.8 on a scale of 2.5 points per tenfold |
| Paper trading (futures, options and margin ÷ market cap, 0%: 10, 100%: 0) | 10 | no futures, options or margin on the exchanges read |
| Supply (smaller is better) | 8.1 | fixed maximum supply of 536 million |
| Record | 8.3 | group average |
| Record (origin, claims, halts) | 10 | 3 positive, 0 negative source |
| Positive record | ||
| Launched with a stated purpose, not as a joke | ✓ | |
| No claims by its founders that contradict its own design | ✓ | |
| No halt, freeze or reversal in five years | ✓ | |
| Age (years since genesis) (Source) | 9 | 9 full years since 2017-05-29, the first day with a recorded price (genesis not yet researched, so the age can only be understated). |
| Development (work, improvements, unfixed issues) | 6 | 1 positive, 0 negative source |
| Positive | ||
| Steady work, 6 of 6 | ✓ | 213 commits in 5 of the last 12 months (github.com/aeternity/aeternity); Reference node aeternity/aeternity v7.3.0 released 2026-09-06 (v7.2.1 March 2026, v7.2.2 July 2026). |
Twenty criteria, weighted equally. The Cryptocurrency Standards have five sections: sound money (six qualities: scarcity, durability, fungibility, portability, divisibility, verifiability), scalability (four measures and three features), security (miner pay and seven checks), decentralisation (censorship resistance, no central team, who can mint, nodes, holders, premine, fundraising and developer share) and privacy (five checks); programmability (token issuance, smart contracts and five checks) follows them. Provisional: criteria marked — are not yet measured and are left out of the average. A rating of structure and market depth, not a price forecast or investment advice. How the grade is built · Highest-graded cryptocurrencies.
385,106,898 of a maximum 536,306,702 AE are in circulation — 71.8% of the total that will ever exist.
| Premine (allocated at launch) | 61.7% of today's supply |
|---|---|
| Sold by the issuer or insiders | 50.6% of today's supply |
| Developer share received since launch | 2.7% of today's supply |
| Developer share of new coins today | 0% |
| Fundraising | Public sale |
The entire ERC-20 supply, 273,685,830 AE (Etherscan max total supply), was allocated before mainnet: 82% to sale contributors, 17% to founders, company and foundation, 1% airdrop. It migrated into the mainnet genesis and later hard forks. Against the current total of 443.44M (aeternity middleware, 2026-10-23), that is 61.7%. This is a lower bound: the 2019 Block Reward Initiative redirected a share of mining rewards to the æternity Crypto Foundation (dev_reward), not summed here.
Contribution campaign 2017. Phase 1 (Apr 3-6): 120,827 ETH + 328.6 BTC at 1,000 AE/ETH. Phase 2 (from May 29): cap CHF 21M at 650-750 AE/ETH. Contributors hold 82% x 273.7M = 224.4M; 224.4 / 443.4 = 50.6%.
Block Reward Initiative: 10.9% (109/1000 shares) of each key block's coinbase went to the æternity Crypto Foundation from the Fortuna fork (block 90,800, Apr 2019) through Iris; it ended at Ceres (block 941,700, 2024). Coinbase over blocks 90,800-941,699 = 110.70M AE (aec_coinbase) × 10.9% = 12.07M AE = 2.7% of 443.45M (middleware total_token_supply). Today the coinbase goes wholly to miners.
The 82/17/1 split is from the phase-1 FAQ and is assumed to hold after phase 2. Phase 2's final raise is not established. The cumulative BRI dev reward would raise preminePct by a few points.
Sources: github.com · github.com · blog.aeternity.com · etherscan.io · mainnet.aeternity.io · blog.aeternity.com. Researched 2026-10-24, high confidence.
Æternity is secured by 3.00 kH/s of its own work. Hashrate does not compare across algorithms — a SHA-256 hash and a Scrypt hash cost different amounts to produce.
No SEC/CFTC determination — unclassified.
The regulator's position, reported as stated, not CoinSpectrum's. Assets nobody has ruled on are left unclassified rather than sorted by a guess.
Æternity is #205 among cryptocurrencies and #1614 in the market ranking, which lists wrapped coins, staked derivatives, stablecoins and tokens alongside them. CoinSpectrum counts an asset once, and counts only cryptocurrencies: assets with their own blockchain and their own consensus. A wrapped coin, a staked derivative or a stablecoin is a claim on something already counted; a token, memecoin or otherwise, runs on another chain's blocks. All of them are listed, each in its own section, and none is added to the total. The 1409 places between Æternity's two ranks are held by claims and tokens, not by other networks. The methodology sets out the rule and the counting rule argues for it.
The price above is the median of the exchanges the site reads live, checked every minute and cross-checked against a market snapshot (how market data is gathered). The grade is scored on published criteria, each with its source (the method). The site is independent, nothing on it is a paid placement, and its statements are signed (about CoinSpectrum, the manifesto).