Cronos ranks #22 of 504 cryptocurrencies. On a list that also counts tokens, memecoins, wrapped coins, staked derivatives and stablecoins it appears at #39: 17 of the 38 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 25 non-native assets CoinSpectrum lists above it by market cap, about 72% are claims on other assets, 24% are tokens and 4% are memecoins.
| CoinSpectrum Grade | C · 62/100 · provisional |
|---|---|
| Rank among cryptocurrencies | #22 |
| Rank counting claims | #39 |
| Market capitalisation | $2.7B |
| Price | $0.0532 |
| Circulating supply | 50,745,250,358 CRO |
| Maximum supply | 100,000,000,000 CRO |
| Consensus family | Proof of Stake |
| Consensus mechanism | Tendermint (Ethermint, exchange chain) |
| Network purpose | Exchange chain |
| Ledger type | Multi-asset ledger |
| Launch distribution | Premine |
Market figures from the 28 October 2026 build. Open the live view for every exchange's price, and charts.
C — 62 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 56 to 66 (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) | 5.3 | group average, 11 of 13 measured |
| Sound Money Qualities (6 checks) | 5.3 | 3.2 of 6 points source |
| Scarcity: a fixed cap that holds, and a supply near 21 million | 2.3 | fixed maximum supply of 100 billion, but an issuer or vote can mint outside the schedule: supply scale 4.6, cap 0 |
| Durability: five years or more with no halt, freeze or reversal | ✗ | 7 full years since its first recorded price, one halt, freeze or reversal in five years |
| Fungibility: every unit interchangeable, none the protocol can freeze or set apart | ✗ | an authority can freeze funds: In August 2026 validators halted the chain and restarted it from a pre-exploit state, discarding about two hours of every user's transactions. |
| Divisibility: the smallest unit worth a cent or less | ✓ | 18 decimal places, the smallest unit worth $5.3e-20 |
| Portability: fees of a cent or less and capacity for real demand | ✓ | typical fee $0.0008; about 6,000 transactions a second (10 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 secp256k1 key can hold and send CRO; the chain's account and transfer 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) | ✗ | CometBFT mempool gossip relays transactions directly; no Dandelion or Tor. |
| 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) | 8 | average of 5 parts source |
| Fees ($0.001 or less 10, $1 or more 0) | 10 | typical fee $0.0008 |
| Throughput (2,478 a second, the busiest network's peak day, 10; 119, the median of the ten busiest, 5) | 10 | about 6,000 simple transactions a second |
| Block time (10 minutes 10, less either side) | 0 | a block every 0.48 seconds |
| Block space per 10 minutes (32 MB or more 10) | 10 | 1.05 MB limit, 1310 MB per 10 minutes |
| Features (3 checks) | 10 | 3 of 3 passed |
| Payments safe to accept within seconds | ✓ | CometBFT gives single-block deterministic finality with sub-second blocks. |
| Pruned nodes: a full node can validate and drop old history | ✓ | Cosmos SDK pruning strategies plus min-retain-blocks let nodes drop old state and blocks. |
| Light clients verify payments from headers or proofs, without a trusted server | ✓ | CometBFT light client verifies headers from validator signatures (also the basis of IBC). |
| 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% | ✓ | 40.2% |
| Largest three under 75% | ✓ | 55.4% |
| More than one maintained client | ✗ | 1 |
| Node software is open source | ✓ | Cronos Labs / Crypto.com develops the only client in the crypto-org-chain/cronos repository. |
| Real on-chain use: 1,000+ transactions a day | ✓ | about 54,152 a day |
| No 51% attack or deep reorganisation in five years | ✓ | |
| Programmability (tokens, contracts, 5 checks) | 8.9 | 8 of 9 points source |
| Token issuance at protocol level, validated by its own nodes | 2 | CRC-20 (ERC-20) contracts on the Cronos EVM chain, open to any account. |
| Smart contracts: a general-purpose contract system | 2 | Cronos EVM runs Solidity contracts deployable by any account, with DEXs and lending on mainnet. |
| Multisig and time locks | ✓ | Multisig and timelock contracts on the EVM. |
| Atomic swaps with other chains | ✓ | EVM HTLC contracts (hash lock plus timelock refund). |
| An exchange built into the protocol | ✗ | No exchange module; VVS Finance and others are contracts. |
| Cross-chain messaging the chain verifies itself | ✓ | IBC (ibc-go) with light-client channels, including ICS-27 interchain accounts, open on the Cronos chain. |
| Non-fungible tokens | ✓ | ERC-721 (CRC-721) contracts on the EVM. |
| Decentralisation | 4.8 | section average, 6 of 8 measured |
| Censorship resistant (Source) | 0 | An authority can halt the chain or freeze funds: In August 2026 validators halted the chain and restarted it from a pre-exploit state, discarding about two hours of every user's transactions. source |
| No central team (Source) | 0 | A central team directs it: Cronos Labs / Crypto.com develops the only client in the crypto-org-chain/cronos repository. 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 100B CRO were created by Crypto.com at issuance in 2018. 70B were burned in 2021 and re-minted to a company-controlled Strategic Reserve after the March 2025 governance vote. Current total supply is about 99.0B CRO (CoinGecko, 2026-10-23); none of it came from open minting. source |
| Fundraising | 10 | No sale of the coin source |
| Developer share (after launch) | 10 | No developer share: every new coin goes to the miners or validators who produce blocks. Treated as no cut. On the Cronos POS chain (formerly Crypto.org Chain, where native CRO is minted) inflation (now about 0.7%/yr and decaying to zero under the May 2026 v7 upgrade) goes to stakers, with a 15% community tax sent to the community pool; since governance Prop 16 (May 2023) that pool is explicitly a burn mechanism, emptied by repeated 50M-CRO burn proposals (Props 18, 26, 28, 30), so it works as a burn rather than a treasury. If the pool were counted as a treasury, rewardCutNow would be 15; its current balance is only about 13.5M CRO (~0.01% of supply). The 70B March 2025 re-mint is a discretionary mint (premine), not a cut. source |
| Supply & Demand | 5.5 | group average |
| Supply & Demand (Source) | 6.4 | average of 6 measures |
| Exchanges (10 or more: 10) | 10 | 34 exchanges |
| Daily volume ($10K 0, $1B or more 10) | 5.2 | $2,872,153 traded in 24 hours; #284 by volume on the exchanges the site reads (scored on the median day of the last 30, $3,921,332) |
| Turnover (volume ÷ market cap, 5% a day: 10) | 1.5 | 0.12% of its market cap a day, median of the last 30 days |
| Order-book depth (bids and asks within 2% ÷ market cap, 1%: 10) | 3.9 | $402,839 within 2% of the price on 6 exchanges, 0.01% of its market cap, median of the last 2 days |
| Market cap ($1M 0, $10B or more 10) | 8.6 | $2.7B, 8.6 on a scale of 2.5 points per tenfold |
| Paper trading (futures, options and margin ÷ market cap, 0%: 10, 100%: 0) | 9.3 | futures, options and margin positions 0.52% of its market cap |
| Supply (smaller is better) | 4.6 | fixed maximum supply of 100 billion |
| Record | 8 | group average |
| Record (origin, claims, halts) | 9 | 2 positive, 1 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, 2026-08-30 | ✗ | Validators halted the whole chain after the ~$75M Tectonic exploit and restarted it from a state before the attack, discarding almost 11,000 blocks (about two hours of all users' transactions); block production resumed 23:49 UTC on 30 Aug. |
| Age (years since genesis) (Source) | 7 | 7 full years since 2018-12-14, 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, 1 not yet researched source |
| Positive | ||
| Steady work, 6 of 6 | ✓ | 507 commits in 12 of the last 12 months (github.com/crypto-org-chain/cronos); cronos v1.8.0, 24 Sep 2026; 28 stable releases in the last 24 months. |
| Shipped a scaling upgrade in two years, +1 | ✓ | Jun 2025: base gas fee cut 10x; 3 Jul 2025 mainnet upgrade: block time from about 5.6 s to under 1 s. |
| Shipped a new capability for users in two years, +1 | ✓ | Smarturn upgrade, 2025: EIP-7702 smart accounts on Cronos EVM. |
| Not yet researched | ||
| Shipped a security fix 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.
50,745,250,358 of a maximum 100,000,000,000 CRO are in circulation — 50.7% of the total that will ever exist.
| Premine (allocated at launch) | 100% of today's supply |
|---|---|
| Developer share received since launch | 0% of today's supply |
| Developer share of new coins today | 0% |
| Fundraising | No sale and no investor round |
All 100B CRO were created by Crypto.com at issuance in 2018. 70B were burned in 2021 and re-minted to a company-controlled Strategic Reserve after the March 2025 governance vote. Current total supply is about 99.0B CRO (CoinGecko, 2026-10-23); none of it came from open minting.
No ICO, pre-sale or public sale of CRO; the coin was distributed through secondary distribution and launch incentives on Crypto.com's platforms. See the note on Crypto.com's earlier MCO token.
Treated as no cut. On the Cronos POS chain (formerly Crypto.org Chain, where native CRO is minted) inflation (now about 0.7%/yr and decaying to zero under the May 2026 v7 upgrade) goes to stakers, with a 15% community tax sent to the community pool; since governance Prop 16 (May 2023) that pool is explicitly a burn mechanism, emptied by repeated 50M-CRO burn proposals (Props 18, 26, 28, 30), so it works as a burn rather than a treasury. If the pool were counted as a treasury, rewardCutNow would be 15; its current balance is only about 13.5M CRO (~0.01% of supply). The 70B March 2025 re-mint is a discretionary mint (premine), not a cut.
Sources: rest.mainnet.crypto.org · rest.mainnet.crypto.org · rest.mainnet.crypto.org · github.com · theblock.co · docs.figment.io. 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.
Cronos is #22 among cryptocurrencies and #39 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 17 places between Cronos'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 Cronos →