Arweave ranks #50 of 504 cryptocurrencies. On a list that also counts tokens, memecoins, wrapped coins, staked derivatives and stablecoins it appears at #163: 113 of the 162 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 157 non-native assets CoinSpectrum lists above it by market cap, about 52% are claims on other assets, 41% are tokens and 7% are memecoins.
| CoinSpectrum Grade | C · 55/100 · provisional |
|---|---|
| Rank among cryptocurrencies | #50 |
| Rank counting claims | #163 |
| Market capitalisation | $228M |
| Price | $3.47 |
| Circulating supply | 65,652,466 AR |
| Maximum supply | 66,000,000 AR |
| Consensus family | Proof of Space / Storage |
| Consensus mechanism | SPoRA (proof of access) |
| Network purpose | Decentralized storage |
| Ledger type | Single-asset ledger |
Market figures from the 28 October 2026 build. Open the live view for every exchange's price, and charts.
C — 55 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 49 to 60 (D to C).
| Criterion | Score | Basis |
|---|---|---|
| Leading Consensus Mechanisms (Source) | 5.5 | group average |
| Consensus: leader ladder | 5.5 | Proof of space: 5.5 of 10 on the ladder of consensus families ranked by their largest chain's market cap |
| Consensus: family ladder | 5.5 | Proof of space: 5.5 of 10 on the ladder of families ranked by the combined market cap of their chains |
| Cryptocurrency Standards (Source) | 4.3 | group average, 11 of 13 measured |
| Sound Money Qualities (6 checks) | 8 | 4 of 5 points, 1 not yet measured source |
| Scarcity: a fixed cap that holds, and a supply near 21 million | 9.7 | fixed maximum supply of 66 million: supply scale 9.3, cap 10 |
| 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 | ✓ | 12 decimal places, the smallest unit worth $3.5e-12 |
| Portability: fees of a cent or less and capacity for real demand | ✗ | typical fee $0.00016; about 8 transactions a second (0.5 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 |
| 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) | ✗ | Arweave nodes accept and gossip 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) | 5.6 | average of 5 parts source |
| Fees ($0.001 or less 10, $1 or more 0) | 10 | typical fee $0.00016 |
| Throughput (2,478 a second, the busiest network's peak day, 10; 119, the median of the ten busiest, 5) | 0.5 | about 7.8 simple transactions a second |
| Block time (10 minutes 10, less either side) | 7.6 | a block every 2.1 minutes |
| Block space per 10 minutes (32 MB or more 10) | 10 | 10.5 MB limit, 49.2 MB per 10 minutes |
| Features (3 checks) | 0 | 0 of 2 passed, 1 not yet researched |
| Payments safe to accept within seconds | ✗ | About two-minute blocks with probabilistic confirmation. |
| Pruned nodes: a full node can validate and drop old history | – | Nodes choose which weave partitions to store, but a documented validate-and-discard mode was not found. |
| Light clients verify payments from headers or proofs, without a trusted server | ✗ | No light-client protocol; users trust gateways. |
| 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% | ✓ | 4.6% |
| Largest three under 75% | ✓ | 10.4% |
| More than one maintained client | ✗ | 1 |
| Node software is open source | ✓ | The Arweave core team (Forward Research / Digital History Association) maintains the only node, ArweaveTeam/arweave (GPL-2.0). |
| Real on-chain use: 1,000+ transactions a day | ✓ | about 8,760 a day |
| No 51% attack or deep reorganisation in five years | ✓ | |
| Programmability (tokens, contracts, 5 checks) | 1.1 | 1 of 9 points source |
| Token issuance through a metaprotocol | 1 | SmartWeave PSTs, AO tokens: read by indexers, not validated by the chain's nodes |
| Smart contracts | 0 | Transactions carry only owner, target, quantity, data and tags; SmartWeave and AO are computed off the base layer by readers and compute units, not by miners. |
| Multisig and time locks | ✗ | Single-key RSA or ECDSA signatures only; no multisig or time-lock fields. |
| Atomic swaps with other chains | ✗ | No hash-lock or time-lock conditions to express a swap. |
| 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 | ✗ | Atomic assets are SmartWeave/AO state read by off-chain evaluators, not consensus. |
| Decentralisation | 4.4 | section average, 6 of 8 measured |
| Censorship resistant (Source) | 10 | No authority can halt the chain or freeze funds: No party can freeze AR; no halts on record. source |
| No central team (Source) | 0 | A central team directs it: The Arweave core team (Forward Research / Digital History Association) maintains the only node, ArweaveTeam/arweave (GPL-2.0). source |
| Who can mint (Source) | 2.9 | Proof of space: 2.9 of 10 on the ladder of who produces blocks |
| Nodes (Source) | — | Not yet counted |
| Holder concentration (Source) | — | Not yet measured |
| Premine (allocated at launch) | 1.6 | 83.8% of today's supply allocated at launch to founders, a company, a foundation or investors. 55M AR were minted in the genesis block (June 2018), with the other 11M reserved for mining rewards, against a current supply of about 65.65M AR (CoinGecko, as supplied). source |
| Fundraising | 1.6 | Sold by its issuer or insiders: 83.8% of supply was theirs to sell, 15.9% sold so far. Floor: presale Aug 2017 (10.8%) plus public sales May and June 2018 (7.1% and 1.1%) = 19% of the 55M genesis = ~10.45M AR; 10.45M / 65,652,466 AR (CoinGecko, 2026-10-24) = 15.9%. The Nov 2019 ($5M) and Mar 2020 ($8.3M, a16z/USV/Coinbase Ventures) rounds were paid in AR but the token counts are undisclosed, so the true figure is higher. Token presale in Aug 2017 (10.8% of initial supply), public sales in May and June 2018 (7.1% and 1.1%), and venture rounds: a16z, Union Square Ventures and Multicoin (Nov 2019), then $8.3M from a16z, USV and Coinbase Ventures (Mar 2020). source |
| Developer share (after launch) | 10 | No developer share: every new coin goes to the miners or validators who produce blocks. Mining rewards (the 11M AR inflation reserve plus the storage endowment) go to the miners who produce blocks; there is no developer or foundation share. The 55M AR genesis allocation is premine. source |
| Supply & Demand | 8.5 | group average |
| Supply & Demand (Source) | 7.6 | average of 6 measures |
| Exchanges (10 or more: 10) | 10 | 30 exchanges |
| Daily volume ($10K 0, $1B or more 10) | 5.7 | $3,123,959 traded in 24 hours; #194 by volume on the exchanges the site reads (scored on the median day of the last 30, $7,258,412) |
| 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) | 8.4 | $768,840 within 2% of the price on 8 exchanges, 0.34% of its market cap, median of the last 2 days |
| Market cap ($1M 0, $10B or more 10) | 5.9 | $228M, 5.9 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 8.8% of its market cap |
| Supply (smaller is better) | 9.3 | fixed maximum supply of 66 million |
| Record | 8 | 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 2020-05-27, 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 | ✓ | 1,345 commits in 12 of the last 12 months (github.com/ArweaveTeam/arweave); ArweaveTeam/arweave N.2.9.7, 2026-10-21; 14 stable releases in 24 months. |
| Shipped a security fix in two years, +1 | ✓ | N.2.9.5.1, 2 Apr 2026: fixed input-validation issues that could crash nodes. |
| Shipped a new capability for users in two years, +1 | ✓ | 2.9 hard fork, 3 Feb 2025 (block 1,602,350): ECDSA signing keys supported. |
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.
65,652,466 of a maximum 66,000,000 AR are in circulation — 99.5% of the total that will ever exist.
| Premine (allocated at launch) | 83.8% of today's supply |
|---|---|
| Sold by the issuer or insiders | 15.9% 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 |
55M AR were minted in the genesis block (June 2018), with the other 11M reserved for mining rewards, against a current supply of about 65.65M AR (CoinGecko, as supplied).
Token presale in Aug 2017 (10.8% of initial supply), public sales in May and June 2018 (7.1% and 1.1%), and venture rounds: a16z, Union Square Ventures and Multicoin (Nov 2019), then $8.3M from a16z, USV and Coinbase Ventures (Mar 2020).
Floor: presale Aug 2017 (10.8%) plus public sales May and June 2018 (7.1% and 1.1%) = 19% of the 55M genesis = ~10.45M AR; 10.45M / 65,652,466 AR (CoinGecko, 2026-10-24) = 15.9%. The Nov 2019 ($5M) and Mar 2020 ($8.3M, a16z/USV/Coinbase Ventures) rounds were paid in AR but the token counts are undisclosed, so the true figure is higher.
Mining rewards (the 11M AR inflation reserve plus the storage endowment) go to the miners who produce blocks; there is no developer or foundation share. The 55M AR genesis allocation is premine.
Sources: coinmarketcap.com · crypto.com · coingecko.com · arweave.org · github.com · arweave.medium.com. Researched 2026-10-24, low 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.
Arweave is #50 among cryptocurrencies and #163 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 113 places between Arweave'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).