Dash ranks #33 of 504 cryptocurrencies. On a list that also counts tokens, memecoins, wrapped coins, staked derivatives and stablecoins it appears at #88: 55 of the 87 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 75 non-native assets CoinSpectrum lists above it by market cap, about 57% are claims on other assets, 37% are tokens and 5% are memecoins.
| CoinSpectrum Grade | A · 79/100 · provisional |
|---|---|
| Rank among cryptocurrencies | #33 |
| Rank counting claims | #88 |
| Market capitalisation | $684M |
| Price | $53.13 |
| Circulating supply | 12,879,297 DASH |
| Maximum supply | 18,920,000 DASH |
| Consensus family | Proof of Work |
| Consensus mechanism | X11 |
| Own hashrate | 2.59 PH/s |
| Network purpose | Payments |
| Ledger type | Single-asset ledger |
| Launch distribution | Premine |
| Regulatory class | Contested |
Market figures from the 28 October 2026 build. Open the live view for every exchange's price, and charts.
A — 79 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 75 to 80 (A to A).
| 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) | 7.5 | group average, 11 of 12 measured |
| Sound Money Properties (6 checks) (Source) | 6.7 | 4 of 6 points source |
| Scarcity (Limited supply · 1 Store of value · Whitepaper §6) | 10 | fixed maximum supply of 18.9 million: supply scale 9.9, cap 10 |
| Durability (Sustainability · 1 Store of value) | ✗ | 12 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 $0.00035; about 56 transactions a second, 3.8 on the throughput scale (5 is the busiest networks' median demand) |
| Divisibility (Flexibility · 3 Unit of account) | ✓ | 8 decimal places, the smallest unit worth $5.3e-7 |
| Verifiability (Authenticity check · 1 Store of value · Whitepaper §8) | ✓ | node software open source; light clients verify from headers or proofs |
| Scalability (fees, throughput, block time, block space, features) | 7.8 | average of 5 parts source |
| Fees ($0.001 or less 10, $1 or more 0) | 10 | typical fee $0.00035 |
| Throughput (2,478 a second, the busiest network's peak day, 10; 119, the median of the ten busiest, 5) | 3.8 | about 56 simple transactions a second |
| Block time (10 minutes 10, less either side) | 7.9 | a block every 2.6 minutes |
| Block space per 10 minutes (32 MB or more 10) | 7.5 | 2 MB limit, 7.62 MB per 10 minutes |
| Features (3 checks) | 10 | 3 of 3 passed |
| Fast payments (Safe to accept within seconds · Whitepaper §11) | ✓ | Every transaction receives an InstantSend lock from a masternode quorum within about two seconds, protecting it against double-spends. |
| Pruned nodes (Old history dropped, every rule checked · Whitepaper §7) | ✓ | Dash Core -prune deletes old blocks (not usable on masternodes). |
| Light clients (Payments verified from headers · Whitepaper §8) | ✓ | Bitcoin-style SPV with headers and Merkle proofs, plus DIP-0004 simplified masternode lists for verifying InstantSend and ChainLocks. |
| Security (miner pay and 7 checks) | 6.5 | 6.5 of 9 points source |
| Miner pay (A day, $1,000 0 to $10 million 10; 2 points) | 2.7 | about $12,015 a day |
| Own hashrate (Half its algorithm's largest, not merge-mined) | ✓ | |
| Largest pool (Pool or validator under 50%) | ✓ | 34.8% |
| Largest three (Under 75% together) | ✓ | 71.4% |
| Clients (More than one maintained) | ✗ | 1 |
| Open source (Node software) | ✓ | Dash Core is developed by Dash Core Group, funded by the treasury, in the dashpay repository. |
| Real use (1,000+ transactions a day) | ✓ | about 9,559 a day |
| No 51% attack (Nor a deep reorganisation, five years) | ✓ | |
| Decentralisation | 8.3 | 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 coins or halt the chain. source |
| No central team (Source) | 0 | A central team directs it: Dash Core is developed by Dash Core Group, funded by the treasury, in the dashpay repository. source |
| Who can mint (Source) | 10 | Proof of work: 10 of 10 on the ladder of who produces blocks |
| Nodes (Source) | 10 | 2,578 reachable nodes (distinct IP addresses at the chain's tip, crawled by CoinSpectrum on 2026-10-27; clearnet only) |
| Holder concentration (Source) | — | Not yet measured |
| Premine (allocated at launch) | 8.5 | 15% of today's supply allocated at launch to founders, a company, a foundation or investors. About 1.9 million DASH mined in the first two days of a launch with a broken difficulty adjustment (the "instamine"), about 15% of current supply. source |
| Fundraising | 10 | No sale of the coin source |
| Developer share (after launch) | 9.4 | Developer share: about 5.8% of today's supply received so far; 20% of each new block reward goes to them today. A treasury (governance budget) funded from the block subsidy: 10% from the budget start at block 328,008 (Aug-Sep 2015), doubled to 20% when Core v20 activated (block 1,987,776, 14 Dec 2023); miners now get 20% and masternodes 60%. Only budget allocated to masternode-approved proposals is minted. Arithmetic: superblocks at blocks 631,408-2,558,864 paid 682,589 DASH (coinbase total minus normal reward, 117 superblocks via the Insight API, ~95% of the maximum budget); the 2015-2017 v12.0 budget period adds at most 133,848 DASH (10% of subsidy for blocks 328,008-631,407); midpoint ~750K / 12.88M supply = ~5.8% (range 5.3-6.4%). 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) | ✓ | Anyone can generate keys and receive and send coins; the consensus rules carry no identity check. |
| UTXO ledger (A new key for each payment · Whitepaper §2, §9) | ✓ | |
| Network privacy (Origin hidden by default) | ✗ | Dash Core relays transactions directly; Tor is optional configuration. |
| Hidden amounts (Amounts confidential) | ✗ | CoinJoin mixes coins of equal denominations but amounts stay public. |
| Hidden parties (Sender and receiver hidden) | ✗ | CoinJoin is optional mixing without ring signatures, ZK proofs or stealth addresses. |
| Programmability (tokens, contracts, 5 checks) | 3.3 | 3 of 9 points source |
| Token issuance | 0 | No token issuance on the chain itself |
| Smart contracts (Scripting for spending conditions) | 1 | Bitcoin-derived Script in Dash Core limited to spending conditions; Dash Platform is a separate chain run by Evonodes. |
| Multisig and time locks (Without a third party) | ✓ | P2SH multisig plus CLTV (BIP 65, block 619,382) and CSV (block 622,944). |
| Atomic swaps (With other chains) | ✓ | HTLCs (hash lock plus CLTV/CSV refund) in standard Script, as in BIP 199. |
| Native exchange (Built into the protocol) | ✗ | No exchange in Dash Core. |
| Cross-chain messaging (Verified by the chain itself) | ✗ | No protocol messaging to other chains. |
| NFTs (Carried by the chain's rules) | ✗ | Dash Core has no token type; Platform documents and tokens live on the separate Platform chain. |
| Supply & Demand | 9.1 | group average |
| Supply & Demand (Source) | 8.2 | average of 6 measures |
| Exchanges (10 or more: 10) | 10 | 33 exchanges |
| Daily volume ($10K 0, $1B or more 10) | 7.3 | $39,544,238 traded in 24 hours; #56 by volume on the exchanges the site reads (scored on the median day of the last 30, $43,730,436) |
| Turnover (volume ÷ market cap, 5% a day: 10) | 9.3 | 6.7% of its market cap a day, median of the last 30 days |
| Order-book depth (bids and asks within 2% ÷ market cap, 1%: 10) | 8.5 | $2,487,397 within 2% of the price on 7 exchanges, 0.36% of its market cap, median of the last 2 days |
| Market cap ($1M 0, $10B or more 10) | 7.1 | $684M, 7.1 on a scale of 2.5 points per tenfold |
| Paper trading (futures, options and margin ÷ market cap, 0%: 10, 100%: 0) | 7.1 | futures, options and margin positions 8.6% of its market cap |
| Supply (smaller is better) | 9.9 | fixed maximum supply of 18.9 million |
| Record | 8.3 | 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, 2023-05-22 | ✗ | Chain stalled at block 1,874,879 during Dash Core v19 hard-fork activation; v19.1.0 hotfix released about 13 hours later to restore block production. |
| Age (years since genesis) (Source) | 10 | 12 full years since 2014-02-07, the first day with a recorded price (genesis not yet researched, so the age can only be understated). |
| Development (work, improvements, unfixed issues) | 6 | 2 positive, 1 negative, 1 not yet researched source |
| Positive | ||
| Steady work, 6 of 6 | ✓ | 2,608 commits in 12 of the last 12 months (github.com/dashpay/dash); Dash Core 23.1.8, released 2026-08-03; v24.0.0-rc.4 on 2026-10-19. |
| Shipped a new capability for users in two years, +1 | ✓ | Dash Core v22.0.0, 12 Dec 2024: 'withdrawals' hard fork for Platform credit withdrawals to Core (activated via the enhanced hard-fork process in 2025). |
| Negative | ||
| Unfixed vulnerability, disclosed 2024-09-18, −1 | ✗ | CVE-2019-25220: a long low-difficulty header chain can exhaust memory because the node has no headers pre-synchronisation; still in Dash v23.1.8. |
| 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.
12,879,297 of a maximum 18,920,000 DASH are in circulation — 68.1% of the total that will ever exist.
| Premine (allocated at launch) | 15% of today's supply |
|---|---|
| Developer share received since launch | 5.8% of today's supply |
| Developer share of new coins today | 20% |
| Fundraising | No sale and no investor round |
About 1.9 million DASH mined in the first two days of a launch with a broken difficulty adjustment (the "instamine"), about 15% of current supply.
No coin sale and no investor round.
A treasury (governance budget) funded from the block subsidy: 10% from the budget start at block 328,008 (Aug-Sep 2015), doubled to 20% when Core v20 activated (block 1,987,776, 14 Dec 2023); miners now get 20% and masternodes 60%. Only budget allocated to masternode-approved proposals is minted. Arithmetic: superblocks at blocks 631,408-2,558,864 paid 682,589 DASH (coinbase total minus normal reward, 117 superblocks via the Insight API, ~95% of the maximum budget); the 2015-2017 v12.0 budget period adds at most 133,848 DASH (10% of subsidy for blocks 328,008-631,407); midpoint ~750K / 12.88M supply = ~5.8% (range 5.3-6.4%).
Sources: docs.dash.org · insight.dash.org · forklog.com · cointelegraph.com · dashpay.atlassian.net · coingecko.com. Researched 2026-10-24, high confidence.
Dash is secured by 2.59 PH/s of its own work. Hashrate does not compare across algorithms — a SHA-256 hash and a Scrypt hash cost different amounts to produce.
Alleged an unregistered security by the SEC (2023 complaint); not named a commodity in 2026 and not adjudicated — status unsettled. Context: fair PoW launch — ~10–15% instamined in the first ~2 days via a difficulty bug, not a premine.
The regulator's position, reported as stated, not CoinSpectrum's. Assets nobody has ruled on are left unclassified rather than sorted by a guess.
Dash is #33 among cryptocurrencies and #88 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 55 places between Dash'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).