Polkadot ranks #23 of 504 cryptocurrencies. On a list that also counts tokens, memecoins, wrapped coins, staked derivatives and stablecoins it appears at #56: 33 of the 55 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 42 non-native assets CoinSpectrum lists above it by market cap, about 62% are claims on other assets, 29% are tokens and 10% are memecoins.
| CoinSpectrum Grade | B · 71/100 · provisional |
|---|---|
| Rank among cryptocurrencies | #23 |
| Rank counting claims | #56 |
| Market capitalisation | $1.7B |
| Price | $0.9950 |
| Circulating supply | 1,709,483,547 DOT |
| Maximum supply | 2,100,000,000 DOT |
| Consensus family | Proof of Stake |
| Consensus mechanism | NPoS (BABE + GRANDPA) |
| Network purpose | Interoperability hub |
| Ledger type | Multi-asset ledger |
| Launch distribution | Presale |
| Regulatory class | Commodity |
Market figures from the 28 October 2026 build. Open the live view for every exchange's price, and charts.
B — 71 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 64 to 75 (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) | 6.3 | 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 | 3.7 | fixed maximum supply of 2.1 billion, but an issuer or vote can mint outside the schedule: supply scale 7.3, cap 0 |
| Durability: five years or more with no halt, freeze or reversal | ✓ | 6 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 | ✓ | 10 decimal places, the smallest unit worth $1.0e-10 |
| Portability: fees of a cent or less and capacity for real demand | ✓ | typical fee $0.0015; about 1,000 transactions a second (8.5 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 sr25519/ed25519 key can hold and send DOT; the Substrate balances pallet 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) | ✗ | Substrate gossip relays extrinsics directly; no Dandelion or Tor. |
| Hidden amounts (confidential transactions, RingCT, shielded pools, Mimblewimble) | ✗ | No confidential transactions on the relay chain. |
| 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 4 parts source |
| Fees ($0.001 or less 10, $1 or more 0) | 9.4 | typical fee $0.0015 |
| Throughput (2,478 a second, the busiest network's peak day, 10; 119, the median of the ten busiest, 5) | 8.5 | about 1,000 simple transactions a second |
| Block time (10 minutes 10, less either side) | 2.8 | a block every 6 seconds |
| Block space per 10 minutes (32 MB or more 10) | – | not yet measured |
| Features (3 checks) | 6.7 | 2 of 3 passed |
| Payments safe to accept within seconds | ✗ | GRANDPA finality typically lands 12-30 s after inclusion; 2 s Asset Hub blocks alone are not final. |
| Pruned nodes: a full node can validate and drop old history | ✓ | polkadot nodes default to state pruning and support --blocks-pruning; archive mode is optional. |
| Light clients verify payments from headers or proofs, without a trusted server | ✓ | smoldot light client (Substrate Connect) verifies GRANDPA finality proofs; production since 2022. |
| Security (miner pay and 7 checks) | 5.1 | 4 of 7 points, 2 not yet measured 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% | – | |
| Largest three under 75% | – | |
| More than one maintained client | ✓ | 2 |
| Node software is open source | ✓ | Parity Technologies maintains polkadot-sdk and employs most core developers; runtime upgrades go through OpenGov and the Polkadot Fellowship. |
| Real on-chain use: 1,000+ transactions a day | ✓ | about 8,600 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 | The Assets pallet on Polkadot Hub, where DOT balances, staking and governance live since the 4 November 2025 migration, lets any account issue tokens. |
| Smart contracts: a general-purpose contract system | 2 | Since the Asset Hub migration of 4 November 2025, DOT balances, staking and governance live on Polkadot Hub, whose Revive layer (EVM and PVM contracts) went live on 27 January 2026. |
| Multisig and time locks | ✓ | Native multisig accounts (signatories plus threshold) and timelock contracts on Polkadot Hub. |
| Atomic swaps with other chains | ✓ | EVM HTLC contracts can run on Polkadot Hub's Revive layer. |
| An exchange built into the protocol | ✓ | The Asset Conversion pallet on Asset Hub is an AMM in the runtime: liquidity pools against DOT and swaps, also used to pay fees in other assets. |
| Cross-chain messaging the chain verifies itself | ✓ | XCM messages between the relay chain, system chains and parachains over XCMP/HRMP/VMP, under the relay chain's shared security. |
| Non-fungible tokens | ✓ | NFT pallets (pallet-nfts/uniques) on Asset Hub. |
| Decentralisation | 6 | section average, 6 of 8 measured |
| Censorship resistant (Source) | 10 | No authority can halt the chain or freeze funds: Only a public OpenGov root referendum could move or freeze funds; no single party holds that power and no deliberate halts are recorded. source |
| No central team (Source) | 0 | A central team directs it: Parity Technologies maintains polkadot-sdk and employs most core developers; runtime upgrades go through OpenGov and the Polkadot Fellowship. 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) | 4.2 | 58.5% of today's supply allocated at launch to founders, a company, a foundation or investors. Genesis was 10M DOT (1B after the 2020 100x redenomination: 50% 2017 sale, 30% Web3 Foundation, 20% held for later sales), against ~1.709B current total supply (CoinGecko, 2026-10-23). source |
| Fundraising | 4.2 | Sold by its issuer or insiders: 58.5% of supply was theirs to sell, 34.2% sold so far. Oct 2017 public sale of 5M pre-redenomination DOT (500M DOT), June 2019 private sale of 500,000 (50M DOT) and July 2020 auction of ~346,400 ($43.3M at $125, i.e. ~3.4%; 34.6M DOT) = ~584.6M DOT, including the Parity-multisig-frozen portion because it was sold. 584.6M / ~1.709B current total supply (CoinGecko, 2026-10-23) = 34.2%. Oct 2017 public sale of 50% (reported ~$145M; much later frozen by the Parity multisig bug), a 2019 private sale of 500,000 pre-redenomination DOT (5%) at a ~$1.2B valuation, and a 2020 sale of 3.4%; the remainder of the 20% reserve is retained for future fundraising. source |
| Developer share (after launch) | 9.2 | Developer share: about 8% of today's supply received so far; 32.2% of each new block reward goes to them today. Before Nov 2024, inflation was ~10% a year, and the treasury received whatever stakers did not, which averaged about 20% of issuance. Ref 1139 then fixed issuance at 120M DOT a year, 15% to the treasury. Ref 1710 cut that to ~55.8M a year from 14 Mar 2026, and Ref 1909 (2026) now splits it 45.2% stakers, 22.6% validator self-stake incentive and 32.2% to a governance-controlled buffer in the Dynamic Allocation Pool. Estimate: ~0.2 x ~510M (2020-24) + 0.15 x ~160M + ~7M (2026) = ~140M of ~1.709B, about 8%. The pre-2024 average is approximate, so the figure is rough (range ~6-10%). source |
| Supply & Demand | 7.9 | group average |
| Supply & Demand (Source) | 8.5 | average of 6 measures |
| Exchanges (10 or more: 10) | 10 | 44 exchanges |
| Daily volume ($10K 0, $1B or more 10) | 7.9 | $32,287,155 traded in 24 hours; #35 by volume on the exchanges the site reads (scored on the median day of the last 30, $92,763,383) |
| Turnover (volume ÷ market cap, 5% a day: 10) | 9.7 | 4.4% of its market cap a day, median of the last 30 days |
| Order-book depth (bids and asks within 2% ÷ market cap, 1%: 10) | 8.6 | $6,658,310 within 2% of the price on 9 exchanges, 0.39% of its market cap, median of the last 2 days |
| Market cap ($1M 0, $10B or more 10) | 8.1 | $1.7B, 8.1 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 9.2% of its market cap |
| Supply (smaller is better) | 7.3 | fixed maximum supply of 2.1 billion |
| Record | 8.3 | 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) | 6 | 6 full years since 2020-07-16, the first day with a recorded price (genesis not yet researched, so the age can only be understated). |
| Development (work, improvements, unfixed issues) | 9 | 4 positive, 0 negative source |
| Positive | ||
| Steady work, 6 of 6 | ✓ | 10,503 commits in 12 of the last 12 months (github.com/paritytech/polkadot-sdk); paritytech/polkadot-sdk polkadot-stable2609, 2026-10-12; 82 stable releases in 24 months. |
| Shipped a security fix in two years, +1 | ✓ | Polkadot SDK, May 2025: fixed the transaction-depth-limit vulnerability (PR #8750); fellowship runtime v2.0.1 upgrade for a security issue. |
| Shipped a scaling upgrade in two years, +1 | ✓ | Runtime v2.0.0, Nov 2025: completed Polkadot 2.0 (async backing, agile coretime, elastic scaling) and moved balances to Asset Hub. |
| Shipped a new capability for users in two years, +1 | ✓ | Polkadot Hub, 27 Jan 2026: native EVM/PVM smart contracts. |
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.
1,709,483,547 of a maximum 2,100,000,000 DOT are in circulation — 81.4% of the total that will ever exist.
| Premine (allocated at launch) | 58.5% of today's supply |
|---|---|
| Sold by the issuer or insiders | 34.2% of today's supply |
| Developer share received since launch | 8% of today's supply |
| Developer share of new coins today | 32.2% |
| Fundraising | Private or venture funding |
Genesis was 10M DOT (1B after the 2020 100x redenomination: 50% 2017 sale, 30% Web3 Foundation, 20% held for later sales), against ~1.709B current total supply (CoinGecko, 2026-10-23).
Oct 2017 public sale of 50% (reported ~$145M; much later frozen by the Parity multisig bug), a 2019 private sale of 500,000 pre-redenomination DOT (5%) at a ~$1.2B valuation, and a 2020 sale of 3.4%; the remainder of the 20% reserve is retained for future fundraising.
Oct 2017 public sale of 5M pre-redenomination DOT (500M DOT), June 2019 private sale of 500,000 (50M DOT) and July 2020 auction of ~346,400 ($43.3M at $125, i.e. ~3.4%; 34.6M DOT) = ~584.6M DOT, including the Parity-multisig-frozen portion because it was sold. 584.6M / ~1.709B current total supply (CoinGecko, 2026-10-23) = 34.2%.
Before Nov 2024, inflation was ~10% a year, and the treasury received whatever stakers did not, which averaged about 20% of issuance. Ref 1139 then fixed issuance at 120M DOT a year, 15% to the treasury. Ref 1710 cut that to ~55.8M a year from 14 Mar 2026, and Ref 1909 (2026) now splits it 45.2% stakers, 22.6% validator self-stake incentive and 32.2% to a governance-controlled buffer in the Dynamic Allocation Pool. Estimate: ~0.2 x ~510M (2020-24) + 0.15 x ~160M + ~7M (2026) = ~140M of ~1.709B, about 8%. The pre-2024 average is approximate, so the figure is rough (range ~6-10%).
Sources: theblock.co · theblock.co · coingecko.com · wiki.polkadot.com · polkadot.polkassembly.io · forum.polkadot.network. Researched 2026-10-24, medium confidence.
Named a digital commodity in the joint SEC-CFTC interpretation (Mar 17, 2026).
The regulator's position, reported as stated, not CoinSpectrum's. Assets nobody has ruled on are left unclassified rather than sorted by a guess.
Polkadot is #23 among cryptocurrencies and #56 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 33 places between Polkadot'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).