Ontology ranks #84 of 504 cryptocurrencies. On a list that also counts tokens, memecoins, wrapped coins, staked derivatives and stablecoins it appears at #469: 385 of the 468 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 474 non-native assets CoinSpectrum lists above it by market cap, about 57% are tokens, 35% are claims on other assets and 8% are memecoins.
| CoinSpectrum Grade | C · 61/100 · provisional |
|---|---|
| Rank among cryptocurrencies | #84 |
| Rank counting claims | #469 |
| Market capitalisation | $49M |
| Price | $0.0488 |
| Circulating supply | 1,000,000,000 ONT |
| Maximum supply | no fixed cap |
| Consensus family | Proof of Stake |
| Consensus mechanism | VBFT (PoS) |
| 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.
C — 61 out of 100, provisional (from 17 of 20 criteria, 28 October 2026 build). With what is not yet measured anywhere from nothing to full marks, the score would be 51 to 70 (D 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) | 4.9 | group average, 10 of 13 measured |
| Sound Money Qualities (6 checks) | 6 | 2.4 of 4 points, 2 not yet measured source |
| Scarcity: a fixed cap that holds, and a supply near 21 million | 3.9 | no fixed maximum; 1 billion in circulation: supply scale 7.8, cap 0 |
| Durability: five years or more with no halt, freeze or reversal | ✗ | 8 full years since its first recorded price, 3 halts, freezes or reversals 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 | ✓ | 9 decimal places, the smallest unit worth $4.9e-11 |
| Portability: fees of a cent or less and capacity for real demand | – | |
| Verifiability: open-source nodes and checking without a trusted server | – | node software open source |
| Privacy (5 checks) | 2 | 1 of 5 passed source |
| Whitepaper privacy: keys are not tied to an identity | ✓ | Anyone can create keys and receive and send coins; the protocol carries 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) | ✗ | Ontology nodes relay 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) | — | 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) | 0 | a block every 1 second |
| Block space per 10 minutes (32 MB or more 10) | – | not yet measured |
| Features (3 checks) | 0 | 0 of 1 passed, 2 not yet researched |
| Payments safe to accept within seconds | – | VBFT finalises each block deterministically, but blocks are produced on demand (about 3,400-4,200 a day, ~23 s on average), and the time to inclusion for a new payment was not established. |
| Pruned nodes: a full node can validate and drop old history | – | No documented pruning mode found. |
| Light clients verify payments from headers or proofs, without a trusted server | ✗ | No light client that checks Ontology consensus ships for users; wallets trust the nodes they query. |
| 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% | ✓ | 46.17% |
| Largest three under 75% | ✓ | 50.81% |
| More than one maintained client | ✗ | 1 |
| Node software is open source | ✓ | The Ontology Foundation (Onchain-founded) maintains the only node, ontio/ontology (LGPL-3.0), and the roadmap. |
| Real on-chain use: 1,000+ transactions a day | ✓ | about 1,882 a day |
| No 51% attack or deep reorganisation in five years | ✓ | |
| Programmability (tokens, contracts, 5 checks) | 7.8 | 7 of 9 points source |
| Token issuance at protocol level, validated by its own nodes | 2 | OEP-4 contracts on NeoVM/Wasm and ERC-20 contracts on its EVM (since 2022), open to any account. |
| Smart contracts: a general-purpose contract system | 2 | NeoVM and Wasm contracts, plus an EVM on mainnet since March 2022 (block 13,920,000), open to any account. |
| Multisig and time locks | ✓ | Multisig and timelock contracts on its EVM, NeoVM and Wasm engines. |
| Atomic swaps with other chains | ✓ | EVM HTLC contracts (hash lock plus timelock refund). |
| An exchange built into the protocol | ✗ | No exchange among the native contracts. |
| Cross-chain messaging the chain verifies itself | ✗ | No protocol messaging to other chains; bridges such as Poly Network are third-party. |
| Non-fungible tokens | ✓ | OEP-5 (ERC-721 analogue) NFT contracts and ERC-721 on the EVM. |
| Decentralisation | 4.8 | section average, 6 of 8 measured |
| Censorship resistant (Source) | 10 | No authority can halt the chain or freeze funds: No freeze, blacklist or clawback power over ONT located; no halts on record. source |
| No central team (Source) | 0 | A central team directs it: The Ontology Foundation (Onchain-founded) maintains the only node, ontio/ontology (LGPL-3.0), and the roadmap. 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) | 0 | 100% of today's supply allocated at launch to founders, a company, a foundation or investors. All 1B ONT were minted in the genesis block (2018) and the supply is fixed and indivisible: 28% institutional partners, 25% ecosystem fund, 15% core team, 12% community, 10% NEO Council, 10% technical community rewards (CoinGecko total 1B). source |
| Fundraising | 0 | Sold by its issuer or insiders: 100% of supply was theirs to sell, 28% sold so far. The 28% institutional-partners bucket (280M ONT) was sold in the Q1 2018 private placement (reportedly ~$0.20/ONT); the NEO Council, team and ecosystem shares and the NEO-holder airdrop were not sold. 280M / 1,000,000,000 ONT fixed supply = 28.0%. No public sale; a private placement to institutional partners (28% bucket) closed in Q1 2018, reportedly at $0.20 per ONT; 20M ONT were airdropped to NEO holders from the NEO Council's 10%. source |
| Developer share (after launch) | 10 | No developer share: every new coin goes to the miners or validators who produce blocks. No ONT issuance: all 1B ONT were minted at genesis and the supply is fixed. ONG is released to ONT holders and stakers, not to a developer or treasury share. source |
| Supply & Demand | 7.4 | group average |
| Supply & Demand (Source) | 7 | average of 6 measures |
| Exchanges (10 or more: 10) | 10 | 32 exchanges |
| Daily volume ($10K 0, $1B or more 10) | 4.3 | $448,588 traded in 24 hours; #552 by volume on the exchanges the site reads (scored on the median day of the last 30, $1,425,552) |
| Turnover (volume ÷ market cap, 5% a day: 10) | 8.4 | 2.5% of its market cap a day, median of the last 30 days |
| Order-book depth (bids and asks within 2% ÷ market cap, 1%: 10) | 8.3 | $154,326 within 2% of the price on 6 exchanges, 0.32% of its market cap, median of the last 2 days |
| Market cap ($1M 0, $10B or more 10) | 4.2 | $49M, 4.2 on a scale of 2.5 points per tenfold |
| Paper trading (futures, options and margin ÷ market cap, 0%: 10, 100%: 0) | 7 | futures, options and margin positions 8.9% of its market cap |
| Supply (smaller is better) | 7.8 | no fixed maximum; 1 billion in circulation |
| Record | 7.3 | group average |
| Record (origin, claims, halts) | 9 | 2 positive, 3 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, 2024-05-20 | ✗ | Block production halted because some consensus nodes had improper settings; resumed after developers and node operators fixed the configuration (duration not disclosed). |
| Halt, freeze or reversal, 2026-08-31 | ✗ | Core team and validators suspended mainnet block production after block 20,770,893 (08:24 UTC) over a security concern that became confirmed malicious activity; resumed about 2 Sep 2026 with sync nodes required to upgrade to v3.1.5. |
| Halt, freeze or reversal, 2026-10-10 | ✗ | Mainnet block production suspended with consensus nodes after an urgent security report about an ecosystem project; resumed 12 Oct 2026 after about 41-43 hours. |
| Age (years since genesis) (Source) | 8 | 8 full years since 2018-03-08, the first day with a recorded price (genesis not yet researched, so the age can only be understated). |
| Development (work, improvements, unfixed issues) | 5 | 1 positive, 1 negative, 4 not yet researched source |
| Positive | ||
| Steady work, 6 of 6 | ✓ | 42 commits in 5 of the last 12 months (github.com/ontio/ontology); ontio/ontology latest release v1.18.0, 2026-10-22; 5 stable releases in 24 months. |
| Negative | ||
| Exploit of the chain, 2026-08-31, −1 | ✗ | Malicious attack activity targeting the network made Ontology's core team and validators stop block production at block 20,770,893; it resumed about 2 Sep 2026 after a mandatory node upgrade to v3.1.5, with no user assets reported lost. |
| Not yet researched | ||
| Shipped a security fix in two years | – | |
| 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 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.
1,000,000,000 ONT are in circulation, against no fixed cap — issuance has no defined end.
| Premine (allocated at launch) | 100% of today's supply |
|---|---|
| Sold by the issuer or insiders | 28% of today's supply |
| Developer share received since launch | 0% of today's supply |
| Developer share of new coins today | 0% |
| Fundraising | Private or venture funding |
All 1B ONT were minted in the genesis block (2018) and the supply is fixed and indivisible: 28% institutional partners, 25% ecosystem fund, 15% core team, 12% community, 10% NEO Council, 10% technical community rewards (CoinGecko total 1B).
No public sale; a private placement to institutional partners (28% bucket) closed in Q1 2018, reportedly at $0.20 per ONT; 20M ONT were airdropped to NEO holders from the NEO Council's 10%.
The 28% institutional-partners bucket (280M ONT) was sold in the Q1 2018 private placement (reportedly ~$0.20/ONT); the NEO Council, team and ecosystem shares and the NEO-holder airdrop were not sold. 280M / 1,000,000,000 ONT fixed supply = 28.0%.
No ONT issuance: all 1B ONT were minted at genesis and the supply is fixed. ONG is released to ONT holders and stakers, not to a developer or treasury share.
Sources: neonewstoday.com · altfins.com · crypto.com · docs.ont.io · ont.io · neonewstoday.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.
Ontology is #84 among cryptocurrencies and #469 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 385 places between Ontology'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).