Avalanche ranks #17 of 504 cryptocurrencies. On a list that also counts tokens, memecoins, wrapped coins, staked derivatives and stablecoins it appears at #28: 11 of the 27 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 18 non-native assets CoinSpectrum lists above it by market cap, 13 are claims on other assets and 5 are tokens.
| CoinSpectrum Grade | B · 67/100 · provisional |
|---|---|
| Rank among cryptocurrencies | #17 |
| Rank counting claims | #28 |
| Market capitalisation | $3.9B |
| Price | $8.86 |
| Circulating supply | 443,967,632 AVAX |
| Maximum supply | 720,000,000 AVAX |
| Consensus family | Proof of Stake |
| Consensus mechanism | Avalanche (Snow family) |
| Network purpose | Smart-contract platform |
| Ledger type | Multi-asset ledger |
| Launch distribution | Presale |
| Regulatory class | Commodity |
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 19 of 20 criteria, 28 October 2026 build). With what is not yet measured anywhere from nothing to full marks, the score would be 63 to 69 (C to B).
| Criterion | Score | Basis |
|---|---|---|
| Leading Consensus Mechanisms (Source) | 9.1 | group average |
| Consensus: leader ladder | 9.1 | Proof of stake: 9.1 of 10 on the ladder of consensus families ranked by their largest chain's market cap |
| Consensus: family ladder | 9.1 | Proof of stake: 9.1 of 10 on the ladder of families ranked by the combined market cap of their chains |
| Cryptocurrency Standards (Source) | 5.5 | group average, 11 of 12 measured |
| Sound Money Properties (6 checks) (Source) | 4.8 | 2.9 of 6 points source |
| Scarcity (Limited supply · 1 Store of value · Whitepaper §6) | 9 | fixed maximum supply of 720 million: supply scale 8, cap 10 |
| Durability (Sustainability · 1 Store of value) | ✗ | 6 full years since its first recorded price, one 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 $0.0005; about 105 transactions a second, 4.8 on the throughput scale (5 is the busiest networks' median demand) |
| Divisibility (Flexibility · 3 Unit of account) | ✓ | 9 decimal places, the smallest unit worth $8.9e-9 |
| Verifiability (Authenticity check · 1 Store of value · Whitepaper §8) | ✗ | node software open source; no light clients or pruned nodes |
| Scalability (fees, throughput, block time, block space, features) | 5.8 | average of 5 parts source |
| Fees ($0.001 or less 10, $1 or more 0) | 10 | typical fee $0.0005 |
| Throughput (2,478 a second, the busiest network's peak day, 10; 119, the median of the ten busiest, 5) | 4.8 | about 105 simple transactions a second |
| Block time (10 minutes 10, less either side) | 1.1 | a block every 2 seconds |
| Block space per 10 minutes (32 MB or more 10) | 10 | 1.84 MB limit, 551 MB per 10 minutes |
| Features (3 checks) | 3.3 | 1 of 3 passed |
| Fast payments (Safe to accept within seconds · Whitepaper §11) | ✓ | Snowman consensus finalises C-Chain blocks irreversibly in about one second. |
| Pruned nodes (Old history dropped, every rule checked · Whitepaper §7) | ✗ | AvalancheGo prunes state only (pruning-enabled) and state sync skips old history at bootstrap, but no option deletes old blocks, which running nodes keep. |
| Light clients (Payments verified from headers · Whitepaper §8) | ✗ | No light-client protocol for the Primary Network; wallets trust RPC servers. |
| Security (miner pay and 7 checks) | 5 | 5 of 9 points source |
| Miner pay (A day, $1,000 0 to $10 million 10; 2 points) | 0 | not mined |
| Own hashrate (Half its algorithm's largest, not merge-mined) | ✗ | not mined |
| Largest pool (Pool or validator under 50%) | ✓ | 1.42% |
| Largest three (Under 75% together) | ✓ | 4.26% |
| Clients (More than one maintained) | ✗ | 1 |
| Open source (Node software) | ✓ | AvalancheGo, the only node implementation, is developed in Ava Labs' repository. |
| Real use (1,000+ transactions a day) | ✓ | about 310,902 a day |
| No 51% attack (Nor a deep reorganisation, five years) | ✓ | |
| Decentralisation | 6.1 | section average, 7 of 8 measured |
| Censorship resistant (Source) | 10 | No authority can halt the chain or freeze funds: No protocol-level party can freeze AVAX or halt the primary network. source |
| No central team (Source) | 0 | A central team directs it: AvalancheGo, the only node implementation, is developed in Ava Labs' repository. source |
| Who can mint (Source) | 8.6 | Proof of stake: 8.6 of 10 on the ladder of who produces blocks |
| Nodes (Source) | 9.3 | 610 active validators or block producers (source: Current) |
| Holder concentration (Source) | — | Not yet measured |
| Premine (allocated at launch) | 2.3 | 76.5% of today's supply allocated at launch to founders, a company, a foundation or investors. 360M AVAX minted and allocated at genesis (sales, team, foundation, partners, airdrop, testnet incentives) against a current total supply of about 470.58M AVAX (CoinGecko, 2026-10-23; staking mints less burned fees). source |
| Fundraising | 2.3 | Sold by its issuer or insiders: 76.5% of supply was theirs to sell, 24.4% sold so far. Seed sale 2.5% (18M at $0.33), private sale 3.46% (24.9M at $0.50, June 2020) and public sale options A1/A2/B 9.97% (71.8M, July 2020) of the 720M cap = ~114.7M AVAX sold. 114.7M / ~470.58M total supply (CoinGecko, 2026-10-23) = 24.4%. $6M from venture firms including a16z (2018), a $12M private token sale (June 2020), and a $42M public sale on 15 July 2020 that sold all 72M AVAX offered (10% of the 720M cap) in about 4.5 hours. Total $60M per The Block. source |
| Developer share (after launch) | 10 | No developer share: every new coin goes to the miners or validators who produce blocks. New AVAX is minted only as staking rewards paid to validators and their delegators from the capped reward schedule; transaction fees are burned. There is no foundation or treasury share of issuance. 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) | ✓ | Any secp256k1 key can hold and send AVAX; the chain's account and transfer rules carry no identity check. |
| UTXO ledger (A new key for each payment · Whitepaper §2, §9) | ✗ | |
| Network privacy (Origin hidden by default) | ✗ | AvalancheGo gossips transactions directly; no Dandelion or built-in Tor. |
| Hidden amounts (Amounts confidential) | ✗ | No confidential transactions on the Primary Network. |
| Hidden parties (Sender and receiver hidden) | ✗ | No sender or receiver hiding. |
| Programmability (tokens, contracts, 5 checks) | 8.9 | 8 of 9 points source |
| Token issuance (At protocol level) | 2 | ERC-20 contracts on the C-Chain's EVM, part of the Primary Network that every validator runs, open to any account. |
| Smart contracts (General-purpose) | 2 | The C-Chain, part of the Primary Network every validator runs, is an EVM open to any account, with DEXs and lending on mainnet. |
| Multisig and time locks (Without a third party) | ✓ | Multisig and timelock contracts on the C-Chain EVM. |
| Atomic swaps (With other chains) | ✓ | EVM HTLC contracts (hash lock plus timelock refund) on the C-Chain. |
| Native exchange (Built into the protocol) | ✗ | No exchange in the protocol; Trader Joe and others are user contracts. |
| Cross-chain messaging (Verified by the chain itself) | ✓ | Avalanche Interchain Messaging (Warp): source-chain validators BLS-sign messages, and the destination chain verifies them against stake weights read from the P-Chain (default 67% quorum, C-Chain included). |
| NFTs (Carried by the chain's rules) | ✓ | ERC-721 contracts on the C-Chain EVM. |
| Supply & Demand | 8.2 | group average |
| Supply & Demand (Source) | 8.4 | average of 6 measures |
| Exchanges (10 or more: 10) | 10 | 47 exchanges |
| Daily volume ($10K 0, $1B or more 10) | 8 | $60,798,488 traded in 24 hours; #33 by volume on the exchanges the site reads (scored on the median day of the last 30, $98,555,528) |
| Turnover (volume ÷ market cap, 5% a day: 10) | 8.1 | 2.2% of its market cap a day, median of the last 30 days |
| Order-book depth (bids and asks within 2% ÷ market cap, 1%: 10) | 8.2 | $11,197,902 within 2% of the price on 9 exchanges, 0.28% of its market cap, median of the last 2 days; a lower bound: the books returned by 1 of them stop short of 2% |
| Market cap ($1M 0, $10B or more 10) | 9 | $3.9B, 9 on a scale of 2.5 points per tenfold |
| Paper trading (futures, options and margin ÷ market cap, 0%: 10, 100%: 0) | 7.2 | futures, options and margin positions 8.0% of its market cap |
| Supply (smaller is better) | 8 | fixed maximum supply of 720 million |
| Record | 7.7 | group average |
| Record (origin, claims, halts) | 9 | 2 positive, 1 negative source |
| Positive record | ||
| Launched with a stated purpose, not as a joke | ✓ | |
| No claims by its founders that contradict its own design | ✓ | |
| Negative record | ||
| Halt, freeze or reversal, 2024-02-23 | ✗ | C-Chain stopped finalizing blocks for about 5-6 hours (from ~11:13 UTC) because of a gossip-handling bug; resumed after validators upgraded to AvalancheGo v1.11.1. |
| Age (years since genesis) (Source) | 6 | 6 full years since 2020-09-22, the first day with a recorded price (genesis not yet researched, so the age can only be understated). |
| Development (work, improvements, unfixed issues) | 8 | 3 positive, 0 negative, 1 not yet researched source |
| Positive | ||
| Steady work, 6 of 6 | ✓ | 6,551 commits in 12 of the last 12 months (github.com/ava-labs/avalanchego); AvalancheGo v1.15.2, released 2026-10-22. |
| Shipped a scaling upgrade in two years, +1 | ✓ | Octane, Apr 2025: ACP-176 dynamic gas target and lower fees; Granite, 19 Nov 2025: ACP-226 dynamic minimum block times. |
| Shipped a new capability for users in two years, +1 | ✓ | Etna, 16 Dec 2024: ACP-77 sovereign L1 validators; Granite, Nov 2025: ACP-204 secp256r1 (passkey) precompile. |
| Not yet researched | ||
| Shipped a security fix in two years | – | |
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.
443,967,632 of a maximum 720,000,000 AVAX are in circulation — 61.7% of the total that will ever exist.
| Premine (allocated at launch) | 76.5% of today's supply |
|---|---|
| Sold by the issuer or insiders | 24.4% of today's supply |
| Developer share received since launch | 0% of today's supply |
| Developer share of new coins today | 0% |
| Nodes or validators | 610 |
| Fundraising | Private or venture funding |
360M AVAX minted and allocated at genesis (sales, team, foundation, partners, airdrop, testnet incentives) against a current total supply of about 470.58M AVAX (CoinGecko, 2026-10-23; staking mints less burned fees).
$6M from venture firms including a16z (2018), a $12M private token sale (June 2020), and a $42M public sale on 15 July 2020 that sold all 72M AVAX offered (10% of the 720M cap) in about 4.5 hours. Total $60M per The Block.
Seed sale 2.5% (18M at $0.33), private sale 3.46% (24.9M at $0.50, June 2020) and public sale options A1/A2/B 9.97% (71.8M, July 2020) of the 720M cap = ~114.7M AVAX sold. 114.7M / ~470.58M total supply (CoinGecko, 2026-10-23) = 24.4%.
New AVAX is minted only as staking rewards paid to validators and their delegators from the capped reward schedule; transaction fees are burned. There is no foundation or treasury share of issuance.
Sources: docs.avascan.info · theblock.co · app.tokenomics.com · build.avax.network · docs.avax.network · theblock.co. Researched 2026-10-24, high confidence.
Named a digital commodity in the joint SEC-CFTC interpretation (Mar 17, 2026).
The regulator's position, reported as stated, not CoinSpectrum's. Assets nobody has ruled on are left unclassified rather than sorted by a guess.
Avalanche is #17 among cryptocurrencies and #28 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 11 places between Avalanche'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).
See the 5 wrapped and staked claims on Avalanche →