Decred ranks #46 of 504 cryptocurrencies. On a list that also counts tokens, memecoins, wrapped coins, staked derivatives and stablecoins it appears at #150: 104 of the 149 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 144 non-native assets CoinSpectrum lists above it by market cap, about 53% are claims on other assets, 40% are tokens and 6% are memecoins.
| CoinSpectrum Grade | A · 75/100 · provisional |
|---|---|
| Rank among cryptocurrencies | #46 |
| Rank counting claims | #150 |
| Market capitalisation | $255M |
| Price | $14.44 |
| Circulating supply | 17,666,227 DCR |
| Maximum supply | 21,000,000 DCR |
| Consensus family | Hybrid |
| Consensus mechanism | Blake-256 PoW + PoS |
| Own hashrate | 6.81 TH/s |
| Ledger type | Single-asset ledger |
| Launch distribution | Premine |
Market figures from the 28 October 2026 build. Open the live view for every exchange's price, and charts.
A — 75 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 67 to 79 (B to A).
| Criterion | Score | Basis |
|---|---|---|
| Leading Consensus Mechanisms (Source) | 4.5 | group average |
| Consensus: leader ladder | 4.5 | Hybrid: 4.5 of 10 on the ladder of consensus families ranked by their largest chain's market cap |
| Consensus: family ladder | 4.5 | Hybrid: 4.5 of 10 on the ladder of families ranked by the combined market cap of their chains |
| Cryptocurrency Standards (Source) | 7.9 | group average, 10 of 12 measured |
| Sound Money Properties (6 checks) (Source) | 8.3 | 5 of 6 points source |
| Scarcity (Limited supply · 1 Store of value · Whitepaper §6) | 10 | fixed maximum supply of 21 million: supply scale 10, cap 10 |
| Durability (Sustainability · 1 Store of value) | ✓ | 10 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 $0.0003; about 6 transactions a second, 0 on the throughput scale (5 is the busiest networks' median demand) |
| Divisibility (Flexibility · 3 Unit of account) | ✓ | 8 decimal places, the smallest unit worth $1.4e-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) | 5.8 | average of 5 parts source |
| Fees ($0.001 or less 10, $1 or more 0) | 10 | typical fee $0.0003 |
| Throughput (2,478 a second, the busiest network's peak day, 10; 119, the median of the ten busiest, 5) | 0 | about 5.8 simple transactions a second |
| Block time (10 minutes 10, less either side) | 8.9 | a block every 5 minutes |
| Block space per 10 minutes (32 MB or more 10) | 3.6 | 0.393 MB limit, 0.786 MB per 10 minutes |
| Features (3 checks) | 6.7 | 2 of 3 passed |
| Fast payments (Safe to accept within seconds · Whitepaper §11) | ✓ | dcrd relays the first-seen transaction and has no replace-by-fee, which meets the first-seen rule, though blocks are 5 minutes apart and no double-spend proofs exist. |
| Pruned nodes (Old history dropped, every rule checked · Whitepaper §7) | ✗ | dcrd has no block-pruning mode; full nodes keep the whole chain. |
| Light clients (Payments verified from headers · Whitepaper §8) | ✓ | dcrd serves committed compact filters for SPV wallets (header commitments, DCP-0005, 2019). |
| Security (miner pay and 7 checks) | 6 | 6 of 9 points source |
| Miner pay (A day, $1,000 0 to $10 million 10; 2 points) | 0 | about $210 a day |
| Own hashrate (Half its algorithm's largest, not merge-mined) | ✓ | |
| Largest pool (Pool or validator under 50%) | ✓ | 42% |
| Largest three (Under 75% together) | ✓ | 46% |
| Clients (More than one maintained) | ✗ | 1 |
| Open source (Node software) | ✓ | dcrd (ISC) is maintained by independent contractors paid from the stakeholder-voted treasury, and consensus changes need a ticket-holder vote; no single company controls it. |
| Real use (1,000+ transactions a day) | ✓ | about 3,040 a day |
| No 51% attack (Nor a deep reorganisation, five years) | ✓ | |
| Decentralisation | 9.2 | section average, 6 of 8 measured |
| Censorship resistant (Source) | 10 | No authority can halt the chain or freeze funds: No party can freeze or claw back DCR; stakeholders can only approve or reject consensus rule changes by on-chain vote. source |
| No central team (Source) | 10 | No central team: dcrd (ISC) is maintained by independent contractors paid from the stakeholder-voted treasury, and consensus changes need a ticket-holder vote; no single company controls it. source |
| Who can mint (Source) | 7.1 | Hybrid: 7.1 of 10 on the ladder of who produces blocks |
| Nodes (Source) | — | Not yet counted |
| Holder concentration (Source) | — | Not yet measured |
| Premine (allocated at launch) | 9.1 | 9.5% of today's supply allocated at launch to founders, a company, a foundation or investors. Premine of 1.68M DCR (8% of the 21M cap): 840,000 airdropped evenly to 2,972 participants and 840,000 to Company 0 and its developers, against a current supply of about 17.66M DCR. source |
| Fundraising | 10 | No sale of the coin source |
| Developer share (after launch) | 9.1 | Developer share: about 9% of today's supply received so far; 10% of each new block reward goes to them today. 10% of every block subsidy has gone to the treasury since launch (Feb 2016). It was paid to the Decred Holdings dev address until the decentralized, stakeholder-voted treasury began in 2021 (DCP-0006). The PoW/PoS split changed in 2022 (DCP-0010) and 2024 (DCP-0012), but the treasury's 10% did not. Block-issued supply is 17,660,424 - 1,680,000 premine = 15,980,424, and 10% of that is ~1.60M DCR, 9.0% of supply. 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) | ✗ | dcrd relays transactions directly; Tor is optional configuration. |
| Hidden amounts (Amounts confidential) | ✗ | StakeShuffle mixing uses equal denominations; amounts stay public. |
| Hidden parties (Sender and receiver hidden) | ✗ | Optional CoinShuffle++ mixing, no 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 | dcrd's Bitcoin-style txscript limited to spending conditions. |
| Multisig and time locks (Without a third party) | ✓ | OP_CHECKMULTISIG plus OP_CHECKLOCKTIMEVERIFY and OP_CHECKSEQUENCEVERIFY in dcrd's txscript. |
| Atomic swaps (With other chains) | ✓ | decred/atomicswap HTLC tools for swaps with Bitcoin, Litecoin and others; also used by DCRDEX. |
| Native exchange (Built into the protocol) | ✗ | No exchange in consensus; DCRDEX is off-chain server software settling by atomic swaps. |
| Cross-chain messaging (Verified by the chain itself) | ✗ | No protocol messaging to other chains. |
| NFTs (Carried by the chain's rules) | ✗ | Decred carries only DCR; no token type. |
| Supply & Demand | 8.3 | group average |
| Supply & Demand (Source) | 6.5 | average of 6 measures |
| Exchanges (10 or more: 10) | 10 | 14 exchanges |
| Daily volume ($10K 0, $1B or more 10) | 4 | $853,930 traded in 24 hours; #674 by volume on the exchanges the site reads (scored on the median day of the last 30, $964,397) |
| Turnover (volume ÷ market cap, 5% a day: 10) | 3.6 | 0.31% of its market cap a day, median of the last 30 days |
| Order-book depth (bids and asks within 2% ÷ market cap, 1%: 10) | 5.1 | $85,967 within 2% of the price on 5 exchanges, 0.03% of its market cap, median of the last 2 days |
| Market cap ($1M 0, $10B or more 10) | 6 | $255M, 6 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) | 10 | fixed maximum supply of 21 million |
| Record | 8.7 | 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) | 10 | 10 full years since 2016-02-10, 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, 3 not yet researched source |
| Positive | ||
| Steady work, 6 of 6 | ✓ | 518 commits in 12 of the last 12 months (github.com/decred/dcrd); dcrd v2.1.7 released 2026-10-15 (v2.1.6 emergency release 2026-08-18). |
| Shipped a security fix in two years, +1 | ✓ | dcrd v2.1.6, Aug 2026: consensus bug fix (single secondary source). |
| Negative | ||
| Exploit of the chain, 2026-08-16, −1 | ✗ | An attacker exploited a consensus edge case in how Decred's regular and stake transaction trees interact to double-spend inputs and mint about 2,078 DCR between 16 and 17 Aug 2026; dcrd 2.1.6 narrowed the consensus rules on 18 Aug, with no rollback. |
| Not yet researched | ||
| Shipped a privacy improvement in two years | – | |
| Shipped a scaling upgrade 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.
17,666,227 of a maximum 21,000,000 DCR are in circulation — 84.1% of the total that will ever exist.
| Premine (allocated at launch) | 9.5% of today's supply |
|---|---|
| Developer share received since launch | 9% of today's supply |
| Developer share of new coins today | 10% |
| Fundraising | No sale and no investor round |
Premine of 1.68M DCR (8% of the 21M cap): 840,000 airdropped evenly to 2,972 participants and 840,000 to Company 0 and its developers, against a current supply of about 17.66M DCR.
No sale to outside buyers. Developers paid $0.49 per premined coin out of pocket or in lieu of pay (about $415k of bring-up costs); the airdrop half was free.
10% of every block subsidy has gone to the treasury since launch (Feb 2016). It was paid to the Decred Holdings dev address until the decentralized, stakeholder-voted treasury began in 2021 (DCP-0006). The PoW/PoS split changed in 2022 (DCP-0010) and 2024 (DCP-0012), but the treasury's 10% did not. Block-issued supply is 17,660,424 - 1,680,000 premine = 15,980,424, and 10% of that is ~1.60M DCR, 9.0% of supply.
Sources: dcrdata.decred.org · docs.decred.org · github.com · docs.decred.org · docs.decred.org. Researched 2026-10-24, high confidence.
Decred is secured by 6.81 TH/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.
Decred is #46 among cryptocurrencies and #150 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 104 places between Decred'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).