Zcash ranks #7 of 504 cryptocurrencies. On a list that also counts tokens, memecoins, wrapped coins, staked derivatives and stablecoins it appears at #10: 3 of the 9 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 4 non-native assets CoinSpectrum lists above it by market cap, all are claims on other assets.
| CoinSpectrum Grade | A+ · 86/100 · provisional |
|---|---|
| Rank among cryptocurrencies | #7 |
| Rank counting claims | #10 |
| Market capitalisation | $21.6B |
| Price | $1,273 |
| Circulating supply | 17,010,610 ZEC |
| Maximum supply | 21,000,000 ZEC |
| Consensus family | Proof of Work |
| Consensus mechanism | Equihash (200,9) |
| Own hashrate | 31 GH/s |
| Network purpose | Private payments |
| Ledger type | Single-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+ — 86 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 78 to 88 (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) | 8.2 | group average, 11 of 13 measured |
| Sound Money Qualities (6 checks) | 6.7 | 4 of 6 points source |
| Scarcity: a fixed cap that holds, and a supply near 21 million | 10 | fixed maximum supply of 21 million: supply scale 10, cap 10 |
| Durability: five years or more with no halt, freeze or reversal | ✓ | 10 full years since genesis, 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 | ✓ | 8 decimal places, the smallest unit worth $0.000013 |
| Portability: fees of a cent or less and capacity for real demand | ✗ | typical fee $0.13; about 116 transactions a second (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; no light clients or pruned nodes |
| Privacy (5 checks) | 8 | 4 of 5 passed source |
| Whitepaper privacy: keys are not tied to an identity | ✓ | Anyone can generate keys and receive and send coins; the consensus rules 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) | ✗ | zcashd and Zebra relay transactions directly; Tor is optional configuration, no Dandelion. |
| Hidden amounts (confidential transactions, RingCT, shielded pools, Mimblewimble) | ✓ | Sapling (2018) and Orchard (NU5, 2022) shielded pools hide amounts; optional. |
| Hidden sender and receiver (ring signatures or zero-knowledge proofs, one-time or stealth addresses) | ✓ | Shielded zk-SNARK spends hide the sender and shielded addresses hide the receiver; optional. |
| Scalability (fees, throughput, block time, block space, features) | 5.4 | average of 5 parts source |
| Fees ($0.001 or less 10, $1 or more 0) | 3 | typical fee $0.13 |
| Throughput (2,478 a second, the busiest network's peak day, 10; 119, the median of the ten busiest, 5) | 5 | about 116 simple transactions a second |
| Block time (10 minutes 10, less either side) | 6.7 | a block every 1.3 minutes |
| Block space per 10 minutes (32 MB or more 10) | 8.8 | 2 MB limit, 16 MB per 10 minutes |
| Features (3 checks) | 3.3 | 1 of 3 passed |
| Payments safe to accept within seconds | ✓ | zcashd (pre-BIP125 Bitcoin base) and Zebra both relay first-seen and implement no replace-by-fee, so a conflicting spend is not relayed; blocks alone (75 s) would not qualify. |
| Pruned nodes: a full node can validate and drop old history | ✗ | zcashd, the node with -prune, reached end of support in July 2026; Zebra, the current node, keeps the full block history. |
| Light clients verify payments from headers or proofs, without a trusted server | ✗ | Zcash light wallets follow ZIP 307, which checks only the previous-block hash and trusts lightwalletd for the best chain; no shipped wallet verifies Equihash headers. |
| Security (miner pay and 7 checks) | 8.6 | 8.6 of 9 points source |
| Miners paid a day ($1,000 0, $10 million or more 10), 2 points | 8.2 | about $1,832,731 a day |
| Its own hashrate: at least half its algorithm's largest, not merge-mined | ✓ | |
| Largest pool or validator under 50% | ✓ | 28.2% |
| Largest three under 75% | ✓ | 64.1% |
| More than one maintained client | ✓ | 2 |
| Node software is open source | ✓ | Two independent organisations ship nodes (Electric Coin Company's zcashd and the Zcash Foundation's Zebra), with Shielded Labs and other teams contributing to ZIPs. |
| Real on-chain use: 1,000+ transactions a day | ✓ | about 6,626 a day |
| No 51% attack or deep reorganisation in five years | ✓ | |
| 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 | Transparent outputs use the Script system inherited from Bitcoin; shielded pools carry no programmable conditions. |
| Multisig and time locks | ✓ | Transparent P2SH multisig and CHECKLOCKTIMEVERIFY, inherited from Bitcoin. |
| Atomic swaps with other chains | ✓ | ZIP 300 (XCAT) HTLCs on transparent P2SH with a hashlock and CHECKLOCKTIMEVERIFY refund, demonstrated with Bitcoin in 2017. |
| An exchange built into the protocol | ✗ | No exchange in the protocol. |
| Cross-chain messaging the chain verifies itself | ✗ | No protocol messaging to other chains. |
| Non-fungible tokens | ✗ | No asset feature on mainnet; Zcash Shielded Assets are specified but not activated. |
| Decentralisation | 9.6 | section average, 6 of 8 measured |
| Censorship resistant (Source) | 10 | No authority can halt the chain or freeze funds: No party can freeze, blacklist or claw back coins; no halts on record. source |
| No central team (Source) | 10 | No central team: Two independent organisations ship nodes (Electric Coin Company's zcashd and the Zcash Foundation's Zebra), with Shielded Labs and other teams contributing to ZIPs. source |
| Who can mint (Source) | 10 | Proof of work: 10 of 10 on the ladder of who produces blocks |
| Nodes (Source) | — | Not yet counted |
| Holder concentration (Source) | — | Not yet measured |
| Premine (allocated at launch) | 10 | 0% of today's supply allocated at launch to founders, a company, a foundation or investors. No genesis allocation, no sale of the coin and no later mint: every ZEC is issued per block. The founders' reward and the development funds that followed are a cut of block issuance, scored under the block-reward cut. source |
| Fundraising | 9.8 | Sold by its issuer or insiders: 2% of supply was theirs to sell, 2% sold so far. No coin sale. The Zcash Company (later Electric Coin Co.) raised over $3M from venture investors by Oct 2016 (Pantera Capital, DCG and others); investors were paid 1.65% of the 21M supply from the Founders' Reward, about 2% of today's supply. source |
| Developer share (after launch) | 8 | Developer share: about 20% of today's supply received so far; 20% of each new block reward goes to them today. 20% of every block subsidy has gone to non-miners since launch: the Founders' Reward (to the first halving, Nov 2020, ~2.09M ZEC to founders, investors, staff and the Zcash Foundation), the Dev Fund (ZIP 1014: ECC, Zcash Foundation and Major Grants, Nov 2020 to Nov 2024: 1,680,000 blocks x 3.125 x 20% = 1.05M), and since NU6 (block 2,726,400, Nov 2024) 8% to Zcash Community Grants plus 12% to the lockbox, continued by NU6.1 (Nov 2025) as a coinholder-controlled fund (802,497 blocks x 1.5625 x 20% = 0.25M). Total ~3.39M of 17,003,461 ZEC = 20.0%. source |
| Supply & Demand | 9.3 | group average |
| Supply & Demand (Source) | 8.6 | average of 6 measures |
| Exchanges (10 or more: 10) | 10 | 34 exchanges |
| Daily volume ($10K 0, $1B or more 10) | 9.5 | $401,567,829 traded in 24 hours; #7 by volume on the exchanges the site reads (scored on the median day of the last 30, $547,606,717) |
| Turnover (volume ÷ market cap, 5% a day: 10) | 8.5 | 2.6% of its market cap a day, median of the last 30 days |
| Order-book depth (bids and asks within 2% ÷ market cap, 1%: 10) | 7.1 | $29,862,009 within 2% of the price on 8 exchanges, 0.14% of its market cap, median of the last 2 days; a lower bound: the books returned by 2 of them stop short of 2% |
| Market cap ($1M 0, $10B or more 10) | 10 | $22B, at the top of the scale |
| Paper trading (futures, options and margin ÷ market cap, 0%: 10, 100%: 0) | 6.7 | futures, options and margin positions 11% of its market cap |
| Supply (smaller is better) | 10 | fixed maximum supply of 21 million |
| Record | 9 | 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 genesis. Mainnet launched 28 October 2016. |
| Development (work, improvements, unfixed issues) | 7 | 2 positive, 0 negative source |
| Positive | ||
| Steady work, 6 of 6 | ✓ | 287 commits in 9 of the last 12 months (github.com/zcash/zcash); zcashd v6.20.0, 2026-06-03 (11 releases in 24 months); Zebra v7.0.0, 2026-10-22 (38 stable releases in 24 months). |
| Shipped a security fix in two years, +1 | ✓ | Zebra 4.3.1 (Apr 2026, CVE-2026-40880), 4.4.0 (May 2026) and 4.5.1 (Jun 2026): consensus-split vulnerabilities fixed. |
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.
17,010,610 of a maximum 21,000,000 ZEC are in circulation — 81.0% of the total that will ever exist.
| Premine (allocated at launch) | 0% of today's supply |
|---|---|
| Sold by the issuer or insiders | 2% of today's supply |
| Developer share received since launch | 20% of today's supply |
| Developer share of new coins today | 20% |
| Fundraising | Private or venture funding |
No genesis allocation, no sale of the coin and no later mint: every ZEC is issued per block. The founders' reward and the development funds that followed are a cut of block issuance, scored under the block-reward cut.
No coin sale. The Zcash Company (later Electric Coin Co.) raised over $3M from venture investors by Oct 2016 (Pantera Capital, DCG and others); investors were paid 1.65% of the 21M supply from the Founders' Reward, about 2% of today's supply.
20% of every block subsidy has gone to non-miners since launch: the Founders' Reward (to the first halving, Nov 2020, ~2.09M ZEC to founders, investors, staff and the Zcash Foundation), the Dev Fund (ZIP 1014: ECC, Zcash Foundation and Major Grants, Nov 2020 to Nov 2024: 1,680,000 blocks x 3.125 x 20% = 1.05M), and since NU6 (block 2,726,400, Nov 2024) 8% to Zcash Community Grants plus 12% to the lockbox, continued by NU6.1 (Nov 2025) as a coinholder-controlled fund (802,497 blocks x 1.5625 x 20% = 0.25M). Total ~3.39M of 17,003,461 ZEC = 20.0%.
Excluding the coinholder-controlled lockbox would give about 18.9%. The 20% development share runs to the 2028 halving under NU6.1 (ForkLog; not checked against ZIP 1016).
Sources: zips.z.cash · zips.z.cash · zips.z.cash · zechub.wiki · coindesk.com · blockworks.com. Researched 2026-10-24, high confidence.
Zcash is secured by 31 GH/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.
Zcash is #7 among cryptocurrencies and #10 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 3 places between Zcash'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 2 wrapped and staked claims on Zcash →