Canton ranks #16 of 504 cryptocurrencies. On a list that also counts tokens, memecoins, wrapped coins, staked derivatives and stablecoins it appears at #27: 11 of the 26 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 | C · 63/100 · provisional |
|---|---|
| Rank among cryptocurrencies | #16 |
| Rank counting claims | #27 |
| Market capitalisation | $4.0B |
| Price | $0.0997 |
| Circulating supply | 39,947,250,149 CC |
| Maximum supply | no fixed cap |
| Consensus family | Federated |
| Consensus mechanism | Canton BFT (privacy L1) |
| Network purpose | Settlement ledger |
| Ledger type | Multi-asset ledger |
| Launch distribution | No premine |
Market figures from the 28 October 2026 build. Open the live view for every exchange's price, and charts.
C — 63 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 56 to 69 (C to B).
| Criterion | Score | Basis |
|---|---|---|
| Leading Consensus Mechanisms (Source) | 8.2 | group average |
| Consensus: leader ladder | 8.2 | Federated: 8.2 of 10 on the ladder of consensus families ranked by their largest chain's market cap |
| Consensus: family ladder | 8.2 | Federated: 8.2 of 10 on the ladder of families ranked by the combined market cap of their chains |
| Cryptocurrency Standards (Source) | 6.6 | group average, 10 of 12 measured |
| Sound Money Properties (6 checks) (Source) | 6.6 | 3.3 of 5 points, 1 not yet measured source |
| Scarcity (Limited supply · 1 Store of value · Whitepaper §6) | 2.7 | no fixed maximum; 39.9 billion in circulation: supply scale 5.4, cap 0 |
| Durability (Sustainability · 1 Store of value) | ✗ | 0 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) | – | |
| Divisibility (Flexibility · 3 Unit of account) | ✓ | 10 decimal places, the smallest unit worth $1.0e-11 |
| Verifiability (Authenticity check · 1 Store of value · Whitepaper §8) | ✓ | node software open source; pruned nodes validate everything |
| Scalability (fees, throughput, block time, block space, features) | — | too few measures yet source |
| Fees ($0.001 or less 10, $1 or more 0) | – | not yet measured |
| Throughput (2,478 a second, the busiest network's peak day, 10; 119, the median of the ten busiest, 5) | – | not yet measured |
| 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) | – | not yet measured |
| Features (3 checks) | 6.7 | 2 of 3 passed |
| Fast payments (Safe to accept within seconds · Whitepaper §11) | ✓ | The Global Synchronizer's BFT ordering confirms and finalises transactions within a few seconds. |
| Pruned nodes (Old history dropped, every rule checked · Whitepaper §7) | ✓ | Canton participant and synchronizer pruning removes old ledger data while the node keeps current active contracts. |
| Light clients (Payments verified from headers · Whitepaper §8) | ✗ | No light-client protocol; parties rely on their participant node. |
| Security (miner pay and 7 checks) | 4.5 | 4 of 8 points, 1 not yet measured 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%) | ✓ | 15.4% |
| Largest three (Under 75% together) | ✓ | 38.5% |
| Clients (More than one maintained) | ✗ | 1 |
| Open source (Node software) | ✓ | Digital Asset develops both Canton (Apache 2.0) and the Splice applications that run the Global Synchronizer, and its engineers write nearly all of the code. |
| Real use (1,000+ transactions a day) | – | |
| No 51% attack (Nor a deep reorganisation, five years) | ✓ | |
| Decentralisation | 7.3 | section average, 7 of 8 measured |
| Censorship resistant (Source) | 10 | No authority can halt the chain or freeze funds: The DSO can expire dust amulets whose holding fees exceed their value, but has no choice to freeze or seize an ordinary holder's Canton Coin. source |
| No central team (Source) | 0 | A central team directs it: Digital Asset develops both Canton (Apache 2.0) and the Splice applications that run the Global Synchronizer, and its engineers write nearly all of the code. source |
| Who can mint (Source) | 5.7 | Federated: 5.7 of 10 on the ladder of who produces blocks |
| Nodes (Source) | 5.5 | 45 active validators or block producers source |
| Holder concentration (Source) | — | Not yet measured |
| Premine (allocated at launch) | 10 | 0% of today's supply allocated at launch to founders, a company, a foundation or investors. No genesis allocation: the Canton Foundation states CC launched (initial phase July-Dec 2024) with no pre-mine, no pre-sale and no allocation to founders, VCs or the foundation; all ~39.9B CC (CoinGecko circulating) were minted as activity rewards. source |
| Fundraising | 10 | No sale of the coin source |
| Developer share (after launch) | 9.9 | Developer share: about 0.9% of today's supply received so far; 5% of each new block reward goes to them today. CIP-0082 (approved 1 Oct 2025) sends 5% of every Canton Coin mint round, taken pro rata from SV, validator and app rewards, to a Development Fund controlled by the Canton Foundation (IssuanceConfig.optDevelopmentFundPercentage, default 5%); it went live with the CIP-0100 spend process in Feb 2026. About 8.5 months at the ~10B CC/yr curve x 5% = ~0.35B, against ~39.9B CC = ~0.9%; actual mints can run below the curve, so treat the share as approximate. Featured-app rewards to application builders and Super Validator rewards (including the Foundation's own SV weight) are not counted as a cut. source |
| Privacy | 4 | section average |
| Privacy (5 checks) | 4 | 2 of 5 passed source |
| Protocol level privacy (Keys not tied to an identity · Whitepaper §10) | ✓ | Holding Canton Coin needs a party hosted on a validator node (validators are onboarded by super validators); the Splice rules carry no identity check of the holder. |
| UTXO ledger (A new key for each payment · Whitepaper §2, §9) | ✓ | |
| Network privacy (Origin hidden by default) | ✗ | No transaction-origin hiding at the network layer; submitting participants are known to the synchronizer. |
| Hidden amounts (Amounts confidential) | ✗ | Canton hides amounts from non-stakeholders by need-to-know encryption and access control, not by cryptographic hiding such as confidential transactions or zero-knowledge proofs. |
| Hidden parties (Sender and receiver hidden) | ✗ | Canton keeps parties from non-stakeholders through encryption and access control, with no ring signatures, zero-knowledge proofs or stealth addresses. |
| Programmability (tokens, contracts, 5 checks) | 0 | 0 of 7 points, 2 not yet researched source |
| Token issuance | 0 | No token issuance on the chain itself |
| Smart contracts | 0 | Daml contracts run only on validator nodes, and MainNet validators need Tokenomics Committee approval, an IP allowlist entry and an SV sponsor's onboarding secret, so the contract system is not open for any user to deploy to; rule applied as for permissioned contract layers elsewhere. |
| Multisig and time locks (Without a third party) | – | Threshold-controlled party namespaces and submission keys (e.g. 3 of 5) give native multi-signature, but no time-locked spending for ordinary users is documented. |
| Atomic swaps (With other chains) | – | No HTLC or adaptor-signature swap with another chain is documented; custom Daml would need a permissioned validator. |
| Native exchange (Built into the protocol) | ✗ | No exchange in the Global Synchronizer or Canton Coin rules. |
| Cross-chain messaging (Verified by the chain itself) | ✗ | Synchronizers connect Canton participants to one another, not to other blockchains; no protocol messaging to other chains is documented. |
| NFTs (Carried by the chain's rules) | ✗ | Token contracts (CIP-56 interfaces) require a permissioned validator node to issue, so no open NFT route exists. |
| Supply & Demand | 6.4 | group average |
| Supply & Demand (Source) | 7.4 | average of 6 measures |
| Exchanges (10 or more: 10) | 10 | 20 exchanges |
| Daily volume ($10K 0, $1B or more 10) | 6.2 | $17,394,584 traded in 24 hours; #126 by volume on the exchanges the site reads (scored on the median day of the last 30, $12,138,760) |
| Turnover (volume ÷ market cap, 5% a day: 10) | 3.2 | 0.25% of its market cap a day, median of the last 30 days |
| Order-book depth (bids and asks within 2% ÷ market cap, 1%: 10) | 7 | $4,905,376 within 2% of the price on 7 exchanges, 0.12% of its market cap, median of the last 2 days |
| Market cap ($1M 0, $10B or more 10) | 9 | $4.0B, 9 on a scale of 2.5 points per tenfold |
| Paper trading (futures, options and margin ÷ market cap, 0%: 10, 100%: 0) | 9 | futures, options and margin positions 0.92% of its market cap |
| Supply (smaller is better) | 5.4 | no fixed maximum; 39.9 billion in circulation |
| Record | 6 | 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) | 0 | 0 full years since 2025-11-10, 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, 2 not yet researched source |
| Positive | ||
| Steady work, 6 of 6 | ✓ | 5,647 commits in 12 of the last 12 months (github.com/hyperledger-labs/splice); Splice (Canton Network / Global Synchronizer) release 0.9.4 on 2026-10-22; weekly releases. |
| Shipped a security fix in two years, +1 | ✓ | Splice 0.5.14, Mar 2026: fixed credentials (Postgres passwords, Ledger API tokens) leaking in plaintext into validator logs. |
| Shipped a scaling upgrade in two years, +1 | ✓ | CIP-0078 (Final), 2026: eliminated transaction fees on Canton Coin transfers. |
| Not yet researched | ||
| Shipped a privacy improvement in two years | – | |
| Shipped a new capability for users 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.
39,947,250,149 CC are in circulation, against no fixed cap — issuance has no defined end.
| Premine (allocated at launch) | 0% of today's supply |
|---|---|
| Developer share received since launch | 0.9% of today's supply |
| Developer share of new coins today | 5% |
| Nodes or validators | 45 |
| Fundraising | No sale and no investor round |
No genesis allocation: the Canton Foundation states CC launched (initial phase July-Dec 2024) with no pre-mine, no pre-sale and no allocation to founders, VCs or the foundation; all ~39.9B CC (CoinGecko circulating) were minted as activity rewards.
No sale of CC by the project. Digital Asset (the company behind Canton) raised $135M in equity in 2025 (DRW, Tradeweb-led), and Tharimmune raised ~$540-545M in a Nov 2025 private placement to build a CC treasury, partly contributed in CC by DRW and Liberty City Ventures (both Super Validator-linked) - those are secondary transfers of minted coins, not a token sale by the issuer.
CIP-0082 (approved 1 Oct 2025) sends 5% of every Canton Coin mint round, taken pro rata from SV, validator and app rewards, to a Development Fund controlled by the Canton Foundation (IssuanceConfig.optDevelopmentFundPercentage, default 5%); it went live with the CIP-0100 spend process in Feb 2026. About 8.5 months at the ~10B CC/yr curve x 5% = ~0.35B, against ~39.9B CC = ~0.9%; actual mints can run below the curve, so treat the share as approximate. Featured-app rewards to application builders and Super Validator rewards (including the Foundation's own SV weight) are not counted as a cut.
Sources: github.com · docs.canton.network · github.com · canton.foundation · canton.network · stakingrewards.com. Researched 2026-10-24, medium confidence.
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.
Canton is #16 among cryptocurrencies and #27 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 Canton'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 1 wrapped and staked claim on Canton →