Zilliqa ranks #97 of 504 cryptocurrencies. On a list that also counts tokens, memecoins, wrapped coins, staked derivatives and stablecoins it appears at #560: 463 of the 559 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 559 non-native assets CoinSpectrum lists above it by market cap, about 59% are tokens, 33% are claims on other assets and 9% are memecoins.
| CoinSpectrum Grade | B · 67/100 · provisional |
|---|---|
| Rank among cryptocurrencies | #97 |
| Rank counting claims | #560 |
| Market capitalisation | $39M |
| Price | $0.00198 |
| Circulating supply | 19,513,551,525 ZIL |
| Maximum supply | 21,000,000,000 ZIL |
| Consensus family | Proof of Stake |
| Consensus mechanism | PoS (Zilliqa 2.0, HotStuff BFT) |
| Network purpose | Smart-contract platform |
| 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.
B — 67 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 59 to 70 (C 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) | 5.6 | group average, 10 of 12 measured |
| Sound Money Properties (6 checks) (Source) | 7.6 | 3.8 of 5 points, 1 not yet measured source |
| Scarcity (Limited supply · 1 Store of value · Whitepaper §6) | 8 | fixed maximum supply of 21 billion: supply scale 6, cap 10 |
| Durability (Sustainability · 1 Store of value) | ✗ | 8 full years since its first recorded price, 3 halts, freezes or reversals in five years |
| Fungibility (Interchangeability · 3 Unit of account) | ✓ | every unit identical and worth any other |
| Portability (Scalability · 2 Medium of exchange) | ✓ | typical fee $0.0002; about 2,950 transactions a second, 10 on the throughput scale (5 is the busiest networks' median demand) |
| Divisibility (Flexibility · 3 Unit of account) | ✓ | 18 decimal places, the smallest unit worth $2.0e-21 |
| Verifiability (Authenticity check · 1 Store of value · Whitepaper §8) | – | node software open source |
| Scalability (fees, throughput, block time, block space, features) | 6.3 | average of 4 parts source |
| Fees ($0.001 or less 10, $1 or more 0) | 10 | typical fee $0.0002 |
| Throughput (2,478 a second, the busiest network's peak day, 10; 119, the median of the ten busiest, 5) | 10 | about 2,950 simple transactions a second |
| Block time (10 minutes 10, less either side) | 0.2 | a block every 1.15 seconds |
| Block space per 10 minutes (32 MB or more 10) | – | no fixed byte limit (gas, compute units or mass instead), left out |
| Features (3 checks) | 5 | 1 of 2 passed, 1 not yet researched |
| Fast payments (Safe to accept within seconds · Whitepaper §11) | ✓ | Zilliqa 2.0 uses a HotStuff-style PoS BFT with about 1-second blocks and deterministic finality within seconds. |
| Pruned nodes (Old history dropped, every rule checked · Whitepaper §7) | – | Pruning for zq2 nodes was not documented. |
| Light clients (Payments verified from headers · Whitepaper §8) | ✗ | No light-client protocol is documented for Zilliqa 2.0; wallets use RPC endpoints. |
| Security (miner pay and 7 checks) | 4 | 4 of 9 points source |
| Miner pay (A day, $1,000 0 to $10 million 10; 2 points) | 0 | not mined |
| Own hashrate (Half its algorithm's largest, not merge-mined) | ✗ | not mined |
| Largest pool (Pool or validator under 50%) | ✓ | 15.3% |
| Largest three (Under 75% together) | ✓ | 44% |
| Clients (More than one maintained) | ✗ | 1 |
| Open source (Node software) | ✓ | Zilliqa Research develops zq2, the only client. |
| Real use (1,000+ transactions a day) | ✗ | about 504 a day |
| No 51% attack (Nor a deep reorganisation, five years) | ✓ | |
| Decentralisation | 5.9 | section average, 6 of 8 measured |
| Censorship resistant (Source) | 10 | No authority can halt the chain or freeze funds: No protocol-level freeze of user ZIL; past halts were bugs, not a designed power. source |
| No central team (Source) | 0 | A central team directs it: Zilliqa Research develops zq2, the only client. 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) | 3.5 | 64.6% of today's supply allocated at launch to founders, a company, a foundation or investors. 12.6B ZIL (60% of the 21B cap) existed at the Dec 2017 token generation event (contributors up to 30%, Anquan 10%, Zilliqa Research 12%, team 5%, agencies/advisors 3%), against ~19.51B ZIL circulating/total (CoinGecko). source |
| Fundraising | 3.5 | Sold by its issuer or insiders: 64.6% of supply was theirs to sell, 30.5% sold so far. The Dec 2017-Jan 2018 private and community sales (48,889 ETH cap, ~$22M) delivered the 'contributors' share of up to 30% of the 21B cap = ~6.3B ZIL incl. bonuses (CoinCarp lists 5.73B for the community round alone). 6.3B / 20,623,800,450 ZIL (CoinGecko total, 2026-10-24) = 30.5%. Private early-contributor sale (~$2.23M) and a community sale (~$19.77M) against a 48,889 ETH (~$22M) cap, Dec 2017 - Jan 2018. source |
| Developer share (after launch) | 10 | No developer share: every new coin goes to the miners or validators who produce blocks. Zilliqa 1.0 paid 20% base and 40% cosignature rewards to mining nodes and 40% to the staked seed-node programme (stakers); Zilliqa's own guard nodes were counted but unrewarded. Zilliqa 2.0 (2025) pays 51,000 ZIL per 3,600-block epoch entirely to validators and their delegators. No foundation share. source |
| Privacy | 2 | section average |
| Privacy (5 checks) | 2 | 1 of 5 passed source |
| Protocol level privacy (Keys not tied to an identity · Whitepaper §10) | ✓ | Anyone can create keys and receive and send coins; the protocol carries no identity check. |
| UTXO ledger (A new key for each payment · Whitepaper §2, §9) | ✗ | |
| Network privacy (Origin hidden by default) | ✗ | zq2 nodes gossip over libp2p with no Dandelion relay or built-in Tor. |
| Hidden amounts (Amounts confidential) | ✗ | Transfers are public. |
| Hidden parties (Sender and receiver hidden) | ✗ | Accounts are public. |
| Programmability (tokens, contracts, 5 checks) | 7.8 | 7 of 9 points source |
| Token issuance (At protocol level) | 2 | ZRC-2 tokens as Scilla contracts and ERC-20 contracts on its EVM, open to any account. |
| Smart contracts (General-purpose) | 2 | Zilliqa 2.0 runs a native EVM execution layer alongside Scilla contracts. |
| Multisig and time locks (Without a third party) | ✓ | Multisig wallet contracts in Scilla and Solidity, with block-number or timestamp conditions. |
| Atomic swaps (With other chains) | ✓ | HTLCs can be written in Scilla or Solidity. |
| Native exchange (Built into the protocol) | ✗ | No exchange in the protocol; ZilSwap and others are contracts. |
| Cross-chain messaging (Verified by the chain itself) | ✗ | No protocol-level cross-chain messaging; bridges are separate services. |
| NFTs (Carried by the chain's rules) | ✓ | ZRC-6 Scilla NFTs and ERC-721 contracts run by the chain. |
| Supply & Demand | 6.6 | group average |
| Supply & Demand (Source) | 7.2 | average of 6 measures |
| Exchanges (10 or more: 10) | 10 | 38 exchanges |
| Daily volume ($10K 0, $1B or more 10) | 5 | $4,223,560 traded in 24 hours; #337 by volume on the exchanges the site reads (scored on the median day of the last 30, $3,068,801) |
| Turnover (volume ÷ market cap, 5% a day: 10) | 9.9 | 4.8% 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 | $122,372 within 2% of the price on 7 exchanges, 0.32% of its market cap, median of the last 2 days |
| Market cap ($1M 0, $10B or more 10) | 4 | $39M, 4 on a scale of 2.5 points per tenfold |
| Paper trading (futures, options and margin ÷ market cap, 0%: 10, 100%: 0) | 5.9 | futures, options and margin positions 17% of its market cap |
| Supply (smaller is better) | 6 | fixed maximum supply of 21 billion |
| Record | 8.3 | 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, 2023-12-18 | ✗ | Mainnet block production interrupted for more than half a day; partners told to pause deposits and withdrawals. |
| Halt, freeze or reversal, 2024-05-08 | ✗ | Block generation slowed and transaction processing stopped; disruptions continued until restoration was announced on 10 May. |
| Halt, freeze or reversal, 2024-09-29 | ✗ | A bug stalled block production; the network had not resumed normal operation a day later. |
| Age (years since genesis) (Source) | 8 | 8 full years since 2018-01-25, the first day with a recorded price (genesis not yet researched, so the age can only be understated). |
| Development (work, improvements, unfixed issues) | 8 | 3 positive, 0 negative source |
| Positive | ||
| Steady work, 6 of 6 | ✓ | 552 commits in 12 of the last 12 months (github.com/Zilliqa/zq2); zq2 v0.21.10, 22 Sep 2026; 54 stable releases in the last 24 months. |
| Shipped a security fix in two years, +1 | ✓ | zq2 v0.21.9, Sep 2026: fix for audit finding F-2026-19000; v0.22.0, Oct 2026: rust-sec advisory fixes. |
| Shipped a scaling upgrade in two years, +1 | ✓ | Zilliqa 2.0 mainnet migration, 23 Jun 2025: PoS HotStuff consensus with ~1.4 s blocks replacing Zilliqa 1.0's slow Tx blocks. |
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.
19,513,551,525 of a maximum 21,000,000,000 ZIL are in circulation — 92.9% of the total that will ever exist.
| Premine (allocated at launch) | 64.6% of today's supply |
|---|---|
| Sold by the issuer or insiders | 30.5% of today's supply |
| Developer share received since launch | 0% of today's supply |
| Developer share of new coins today | 0% |
| Fundraising | Public sale |
12.6B ZIL (60% of the 21B cap) existed at the Dec 2017 token generation event (contributors up to 30%, Anquan 10%, Zilliqa Research 12%, team 5%, agencies/advisors 3%), against ~19.51B ZIL circulating/total (CoinGecko).
Private early-contributor sale (~$2.23M) and a community sale (~$19.77M) against a 48,889 ETH (~$22M) cap, Dec 2017 - Jan 2018.
The Dec 2017-Jan 2018 private and community sales (48,889 ETH cap, ~$22M) delivered the 'contributors' share of up to 30% of the 21B cap = ~6.3B ZIL incl. bonuses (CoinCarp lists 5.73B for the community round alone). 6.3B / 20,623,800,450 ZIL (CoinGecko total, 2026-10-24) = 30.5%.
Zilliqa 1.0 paid 20% base and 40% cosignature rewards to mining nodes and 40% to the staked seed-node programme (stakers); Zilliqa's own guard nodes were counted but unrewarded. Zilliqa 2.0 (2025) pays 51,000 ZIL per 3,600-block epoch entirely to validators and their delegators. No foundation share.
Sources: blog.zilliqa.com · coincarp.com · coingecko.com · blog.zilliqa.com · unpkg.com · blog.zilliqa.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.
Zilliqa is #97 among cryptocurrencies and #560 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 463 places between Zilliqa'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).