Kava ranks #69 of 504 cryptocurrencies. On a list that also counts tokens, memecoins, wrapped coins, staked derivatives and stablecoins it appears at #341: 272 of the 340 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 352 non-native assets CoinSpectrum lists above it by market cap, about 52% are tokens, 41% are claims on other assets and 7% are memecoins.
| CoinSpectrum Grade | A · 74/100 · provisional |
|---|---|
| Rank among cryptocurrencies | #69 |
| Rank counting claims | #341 |
| Market capitalisation | $75M |
| Price | $0.0690 |
| Circulating supply | 1,082,846,885 KAVA |
| Maximum supply | no fixed cap |
| Consensus family | Proof of Stake |
| Consensus mechanism | Tendermint (CometBFT) |
| Network purpose | Financial ledger |
| 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.
A — 74 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 77 (B to A).
| 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) | 7.2 | group average, 11 of 13 measured |
| Sound Money Qualities (6 checks) | 9 | 5.4 of 6 points source |
| Scarcity: a fixed cap that holds, and a supply near 21 million | 3.9 | no fixed maximum; 1.08 billion in circulation: supply scale 7.7, cap 0 |
| Durability: five years or more with no halt, freeze or reversal | ✓ | 7 full years since its first recorded price, no halt, freeze or reversal in five years |
| Fungibility: every unit interchangeable, none the protocol can freeze or set apart | ✓ | no authority can freeze, blacklist or set apart a coin |
| Divisibility: the smallest unit worth a cent or less | ✓ | 6 decimal places, the smallest unit worth $6.9e-8 |
| Portability: fees of a cent or less and capacity for real demand | ✓ | typical fee $0.0000015; about 167 transactions a second (5.6 on the throughput scale; 5 is the busiest networks' median demand) |
| Verifiability: open-source nodes and checking without a trusted server | ✓ | node software open source; light clients verify from headers or proofs |
| Privacy (5 checks) | 2 | 1 of 5 passed source |
| Whitepaper privacy: keys are not tied to an identity | ✓ | Any key can hold and send KAVA; the Cosmos SDK bank and auth modules carry no identity check. |
| UTXO ledger: a new key for each payment, no account linking every coin | ✗ | |
| Network-level privacy: the node hides where a transaction came from (Dandelion++, Tor or I2P, on by default) | ✗ | CometBFT gossip relays transactions directly. |
| Hidden amounts (confidential transactions, RingCT, shielded pools, Mimblewimble) | ✗ | No confidential transactions. |
| Hidden sender and receiver (ring signatures or zero-knowledge proofs, one-time or stealth addresses) | ✗ | No sender or receiver hiding. |
| Scalability (fees, throughput, block time, block space, features) | 6.9 | average of 5 parts source |
| Fees ($0.001 or less 10, $1 or more 0) | 10 | typical fee $0.0000015 |
| Throughput (2,478 a second, the busiest network's peak day, 10; 119, the median of the ten busiest, 5) | 5.6 | about 167 simple transactions a second |
| Block time (10 minutes 10, less either side) | 2.7 | a block every 5.71 seconds |
| Block space per 10 minutes (32 MB or more 10) | 9.3 | 0.2 MB limit, 21 MB per 10 minutes |
| Features (3 checks) | 6.7 | 2 of 3 passed |
| Payments safe to accept within seconds | ✗ | CometBFT single-block finality, but blocks average about 5.7 s. |
| Pruned nodes: a full node can validate and drop old history | ✓ | Cosmos SDK pruning strategies plus min-retain-blocks. |
| Light clients verify payments from headers or proofs, without a trusted server | ✓ | CometBFT light client verifies headers from validator signatures. |
| Security (miner pay and 7 checks) | 5 | 5 of 9 points source |
| Miners paid a day ($1,000 0, $10 million or more 10), 2 points | 0 | not mined |
| Its own hashrate: at least half its algorithm's largest, not merge-mined | ✗ | not mined |
| Largest pool or validator under 50% | ✓ | 23.95% |
| Largest three under 75% | ✓ | 47.99% |
| More than one maintained client | ✗ | 1 |
| Node software is open source | ✓ | The Kava node is developed by Kava Labs in its repository. |
| Real on-chain use: 1,000+ transactions a day | ✓ | about 3,936 a day |
| No 51% attack or deep reorganisation in five years | ✓ | |
| Programmability (tokens, contracts, 5 checks) | 10 | 9 of 9 points source |
| Token issuance at protocol level, validated by its own nodes | 2 | ERC-20 contracts on the Kava EVM co-chain, which runs inside the same Kava chain and validator set, open to any account. |
| Smart contracts: a general-purpose contract system | 2 | The Kava EVM, part of the Kava chain and its validator set, open to any account. |
| Multisig and time locks | ✓ | Native Cosmos SDK multisig accounts plus timelock contracts on the EVM. |
| Atomic swaps with other chains | ✓ | EVM HTLC contracts (hash lock plus timelock refund). |
| An exchange built into the protocol | ✓ | The x/swap module (Kava Swap) runs AMM pools such as BNB/USDX and BTCB/USDX in the chain itself, still holding liquidity. |
| Cross-chain messaging the chain verifies itself | ✓ | IBC (ibc-go v7) light-client channels (163). |
| Non-fungible tokens | ✓ | ERC-721 contracts on the Kava EVM. |
| Decentralisation | 7.8 | section average, 6 of 8 measured |
| Censorship resistant (Source) | 10 | No authority can halt the chain or freeze funds: No protocol-level freeze or blacklist of ordinary KAVA balances. source |
| No central team (Source) | 0 | A central team directs it: The Kava node is developed by Kava Labs in its repository. source |
| Who can mint (Source) | 8.6 | Proof of stake: 8.6 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 | 9.2% of today's supply allocated at launch to founders, a company, a foundation or investors. Genesis supply of about 100M KAVA (derived: the Binance IEO sold 6.52% of total supply for $3M at $0.46, which implies 100M) against today's fixed total supply of 1,082,846,885 KAVA (CoinGecko, 2026-10-23). source |
| Fundraising | 9.1 | Sold by its issuer or insiders: 9.2% of supply was theirs to sell, 4.3% sold so far. Three private sales sold ~30.05M ($0.075), 5.02M ($0.25) and 4.93M ($0.40) KAVA ($5.48M), and the October 2019 Binance Launchpad IEO sold 6.52M at $0.46, for ~46.52M. 46.52M / 1,082.85M total supply (CoinGecko, 2026-10-23) = 4.3%. $5.48M across three private token sales (backers include Ripple and Arrington XRP Capital), then a Binance Launchpad IEO in October 2019 for 6.52% of supply at $0.46 (about $3M). source |
| Developer share (after launch) | 10 | No developer share: every new coin goes to the miners or validators who produce blocks. Inflation has been zero since 1 Jan 2024 (Kava 15), and community_tax is now 0. Before that, the community pool took a large share. Proposal 78 (Mar 2022) raised minimum inflation from 20% to 100%, with 62.5% of block rewards going to developers via the community pool (Kava Rise), and Everstake cites a 94.5% community tax before 2024. Supply grew from about 100M at genesis to the current fixed 1,082.8M, so pool-bound issuance may be a large share of supply, but the minted amounts and dates are not established. source |
| Supply & Demand | 7.5 | group average |
| Supply & Demand (Source) | 7.3 | average of 6 measures |
| Exchanges (10 or more: 10) | 10 | 30 exchanges |
| Daily volume ($10K 0, $1B or more 10) | 4.6 | $877,093 traded in 24 hours; #453 by volume on the exchanges the site reads (scored on the median day of the last 30, $1,995,729) |
| Turnover (volume ÷ market cap, 5% a day: 10) | 8.6 | 2.7% of its market cap a day, median of the last 30 days |
| Order-book depth (bids and asks within 2% ÷ market cap, 1%: 10) | 9.8 | $659,716 within 2% of the price on 8 exchanges, 0.88% of its market cap, median of the last 2 days |
| Market cap ($1M 0, $10B or more 10) | 4.7 | $75M, 4.7 on a scale of 2.5 points per tenfold |
| Paper trading (futures, options and margin ÷ market cap, 0%: 10, 100%: 0) | 6 | futures, options and margin positions 16% of its market cap |
| Supply (smaller is better) | 7.7 | no fixed maximum; 1.08 billion in circulation |
| Record | 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) | 7 | 7 full years since 2019-10-25, the first day with a recorded price (genesis not yet researched, so the age can only be understated). |
| Development (work, improvements, unfixed issues) | 4 | 1 positive, 2 negative, 1 not yet researched source |
| Positive | ||
| Steady work, 6 of 6 | ✓ | 3 commits in 2 of the last 12 months (github.com/Kava-Labs/kava); kava v0.28.2, released 2026-01-23 (v0.27.0, v0.27.1, v0.28.0, v0.28.1 also in window). |
| Negative | ||
| Unfixed vulnerability, disclosed 2025-02-27, −1 | ✗ | ibc-go ASA-2025-004 (GHSA-jg6f-48ff-5xrw, Critical) lets anyone who opens an IBC channel halt the chain through non-deterministic acknowledgement JSON; Kava v0.28.2 uses ibc-go v7.7.0, without the fix (v7.9.2 / v8.6.1). |
| Unfixed vulnerability, disclosed 2025-03-12, −1 | ✗ | ibc-go ISA-2025-001 (GHSA-4wf3-5qj9-368v, High) extends the same acknowledgement chain-halt to all IBC apps; Kava v0.28.2 uses ibc-go v7.7.0, without the fix (v7.10.0 / v8.7.0). |
| Not yet researched | ||
| Shipped a security fix in two years | – | |
Twenty criteria, weighted equally. The Cryptocurrency Standards have six sections: sound money qualities (six checks: scarcity, durability, fungibility, divisibility, portability, verifiability), privacy (five checks), scalability (four measures and three features), security (miner pay and seven checks), programmability (token issuance, smart contracts and five checks) and decentralisation (censorship resistance, no central team, who can mint, nodes, holders, premine, fundraising and developer share). 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.
1,082,846,885 KAVA are in circulation, against no fixed cap — issuance has no defined end.
| Premine (allocated at launch) | 9.2% of today's supply |
|---|---|
| Sold by the issuer or insiders | 4.3% of today's supply |
| Developer share of new coins today | 0% |
| Fundraising | Private or venture funding |
Genesis supply of about 100M KAVA (derived: the Binance IEO sold 6.52% of total supply for $3M at $0.46, which implies 100M) against today's fixed total supply of 1,082,846,885 KAVA (CoinGecko, 2026-10-23).
$5.48M across three private token sales (backers include Ripple and Arrington XRP Capital), then a Binance Launchpad IEO in October 2019 for 6.52% of supply at $0.46 (about $3M).
Three private sales sold ~30.05M ($0.075), 5.02M ($0.25) and 4.93M ($0.40) KAVA ($5.48M), and the October 2019 Binance Launchpad IEO sold 6.52M at $0.46, for ~46.52M. 46.52M / 1,082.85M total supply (CoinGecko, 2026-10-23) = 4.3%.
Inflation has been zero since 1 Jan 2024 (Kava 15), and community_tax is now 0. Before that, the community pool took a large share. Proposal 78 (Mar 2022) raised minimum inflation from 20% to 100%, with 62.5% of block rewards going to developers via the community pool (Kava Rise), and Everstake cites a 94.5% community tax before 2024. Supply grew from about 100M at genesis to the current fixed 1,082.8M, so pool-bound issuance may be a large share of supply, but the minted amounts and dates are not established.
Sources: binance.com · icodrops.com · coincarp.com · kava.io · kava.io · everstake.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.
Kava is #69 among cryptocurrencies and #341 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 272 places between Kava'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 Kava →