Decred ranks #47 of 508 cryptocurrencies. On a list that also counts tokens, memecoins, wrapped coins, staked derivatives and stablecoins it appears at #152: 105 of the 151 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 146 non-native assets CoinSpectrum lists above it by market cap, about 53% are claims on other assets, 40% are tokens and 6% are memecoins.
| CoinSpectrum Grade | B · 72/100 · provisional |
|---|---|
| Rank among cryptocurrencies | #47 |
| Rank counting claims | #152 |
| Market capitalisation | $256M |
| Price | $14.48 |
| Circulating supply | 17,666,227 DCR |
| Maximum supply | 21,000,000 DCR |
| Consensus family | Hybrid |
| Consensus mechanism | Blake-256 PoW + PoS |
| Own hashrate | 3.84 TH/s |
| Ledger type | Single-asset ledger |
| Launch distribution | Premine |
Market figures from the 28 October 2026 build. Open the live view for every exchange's price, and charts.
B — 72 out of 100, provisional (from 15 of 17 criteria, 28 October 2026 build). With what is not yet measured anywhere from nothing to full marks, the score would be 64 to 77 (B to A).
| Criterion | Score | Basis |
|---|---|---|
| Leading Consensus Mechanisms (Source) | 4.5 | group average |
| Consensus: leader ladder | 4.5 | Hybrid: 4.5 of 10 on the ladder of consensus families ranked by their largest chain's market cap |
| Consensus: family ladder | 4.5 | Hybrid: 4.5 of 10 on the ladder of families ranked by the combined market cap of their chains |
| Cryptocurrency Standards | 6.6 | group average, 4 of 6 measured |
| Properties (10 whitepaper checks) (Source) | 7 | 7 of 10 passed source |
| Anyone can mint (permissionless) | ✓ | Blake-256 PoW + PoS |
| Limited supply | ✓ | fixed maximum of 21,000,000 |
| No pre-issuance or developer mint | ✗ | |
| No developer tax | ✗ | |
| No authority that can halt the chain or freeze funds | ✓ | No party can freeze or claw back DCR; stakeholders can only approve or reject consensus rule changes by on-chain vote. |
| No central team | ✓ | dcrd (ISC) is maintained by independent contractors paid from the stakeholder-voted treasury, and consensus changes need a ticket-holder vote; no single company controls it. |
| Fees under one cent | ✓ | typical fee $0.0003 |
| Payments safe to accept within seconds | ✓ | dcrd relays the first-seen transaction and has no replace-by-fee, which meets the first-seen rule, though blocks are 5 minutes apart and no double-spend proofs exist. |
| UTXO ledger | ✓ | |
| Privacy built into the protocol | ✗ | StakeShuffle (CSPP) mixing is opt-in through dcrwallet with mix messages relayed by dcrd; it is CoinJoin-class mixing, not protocol-enforced privacy. |
| Scalability (fees, throughput, block time, block space) | 6.3 | average of 4 measures source |
| Fees ($0.001 or less 10, $1 or more 0) | 10 | typical fee $0.0003 |
| Throughput (1,000 transactions a second or more 10) | 2.5 | about 5.8 simple transactions a second |
| Block time (10 minutes 10, less either side) | 8.9 | a block every 5 minutes |
| Block space per 10 minutes (32 MB or more 10) | 3.6 | 0.393 MB limit, 0.786 MB per 10 minutes |
| Security (9 checks) | 6 | 6 of 9 passed source |
| Miners paid over $1 million a day | ✗ | about $211 a day |
| Miners paid over $100,000 a day | ✗ | |
| Its own hashrate: at least half its algorithm's largest, not merge-mined | ✓ | |
| Largest pool or validator under 50% | ✓ | 42% |
| Largest three under 75% | ✓ | 46% |
| More than one maintained client | ✗ | 1 |
| Node software is open source | ✓ | dcrd (ISC) is maintained by independent contractors paid from the stakeholder-voted treasury, and consensus changes need a ticket-holder vote; no single company controls it. |
| Real on-chain use: 1,000+ transactions a day | ✓ | about 3,040 a day |
| No 51% attack or deep reorganisation in five years | ✓ | |
| Decentralisation: who can mint (Source) | 7.1 | Hybrid: 7.1 of 10 on the ladder of who produces blocks |
| Decentralisation: nodes (Source) | — | Not yet counted |
| Decentralisation: holder concentration (Source) | — | Not yet measured |
| Capabilities (protocol features) | 3.3 | 2 of 6 passed source |
| Decentralisation | ||
| Network-level privacy: the node hides where a transaction came from (Dandelion++, Tor or I2P, on by default) | ✗ | dcrd relays transactions directly; Tor is optional configuration. |
| Light clients verify payments from headers or proofs, without a trusted server | ✓ | dcrd serves committed compact filters for SPV wallets (header commitments, DCP-0005, 2019). |
| Scalability | ||
| Pruned nodes: a full node can validate and drop old history | ✗ | dcrd has no block-pruning mode; full nodes keep the whole chain. |
| Native payment channels or instant payments | ✓ | dcrlnd: Lightning Network payment channels on Decred script (mainnet since 2019). |
| Security | ||
| Hidden amounts (confidential transactions, RingCT, shielded pools, Mimblewimble) | ✗ | StakeShuffle mixing uses equal denominations; amounts stay public. |
| Hidden sender and receiver (ring signatures or zero-knowledge proofs, one-time or stealth addresses) | ✗ | Optional CoinShuffle++ mixing, no ring signatures, ZK proofs or stealth addresses. |
| Issuance | 9.4 | group average |
| Premine (allocated at launch) | 9.1 | 9.5% of today's supply allocated at launch to founders, a company, a foundation or investors. Premine of 1.68M DCR (8% of the 21M cap): 840,000 airdropped evenly to 2,972 participants and 840,000 to Company 0 and its developers, against a current supply of about 17.66M DCR. source |
| Fundraising | 10 | No sale of the coin source |
| Developer share (after launch) | 9.1 | Developer share: about 9% of today's supply received so far; 10% of each new block reward goes to them today. 10% of every block subsidy has gone to the treasury since launch (Feb 2016). It was paid to the Decred Holdings dev address until the decentralized, stakeholder-voted treasury began in 2021 (DCP-0006). The PoW/PoS split changed in 2022 (DCP-0010) and 2024 (DCP-0012), but the treasury's 10% did not. Block-issued supply is 17,660,424 - 1,680,000 premine = 15,980,424, and 10% of that is ~1.60M DCR, 9.0% of supply. source |
| Supply & Demand | 7.9 | group average |
| Supply & Demand (Source) | 5.8 | average of 6 measures |
| Exchanges (10 or more: 10) | 10 | 14 exchanges |
| Volume rank among the top 200 | 0 | $919,866 traded in 24 hours; #670 by volume on the exchanges the site reads (ranked on the median day of the last 30, $964,397) |
| Turnover (volume ÷ market cap, 5% a day: 10) | 3.6 | 0.31% of its market cap a day, median of the last 30 days |
| Order-book depth (bids and asks within 2% ÷ market cap, 1%: 10) | 5.1 | $86,470 within 2% of the price on 5 exchanges, 0.03% of its market cap, median of the last 2 days |
| Market cap ($1M 0, $10B or more 10) | 6 | $256M, 6 on a scale of 2.5 points per tenfold |
| Futures exposure (open interest ÷ market cap, less is better) | 10 | no perpetual futures on the exchanges read |
| Supply (smaller is better) | 10 | fixed maximum supply of 21 million |
| Record | 8.7 | 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 2016-02-10, the first day with a recorded price (genesis not yet researched, so the age can only be understated). |
| Development (work, improvements, unfixed issues) | 6 | 2 positive, 1 negative, 3 not yet researched source |
| Positive | ||
| Steady work, 6 of 6 | ✓ | 518 commits in 12 of the last 12 months (github.com/decred/dcrd); dcrd v2.1.7 released 2026-10-15 (v2.1.6 emergency release 2026-08-18). |
| Shipped a security fix in two years, +1 | ✓ | dcrd v2.1.6, Aug 2026: consensus bug fix (single secondary source). |
| Negative | ||
| Exploit of the chain, 2026-08-16, −1 | ✗ | An attacker exploited a consensus edge case in how Decred's regular and stake transaction trees interact to double-spend inputs and mint about 2,078 DCR between 16 and 17 Aug 2026; dcrd 2.1.6 narrowed the consensus rules on 18 Aug, with no rollback. |
| Not yet researched | ||
| Shipped a privacy improvement in two years | – | |
| Shipped a scaling upgrade in two years | – | |
| Shipped a new capability for users in two years | – | |
Seventeen criteria, weighted equally. The Cryptocurrency Standards group four parts: properties (ten checks drawn from the Bitcoin whitepaper), scalability (four measures), security (nine checks) and decentralisation (three scales). 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.
17,666,227 of a maximum 21,000,000 DCR are in circulation — 84.1% of the total that will ever exist.
| Premine (allocated at launch) | 9.5% of today's supply |
|---|---|
| Developer share received since launch | 9% of today's supply |
| Developer share of new coins today | 10% |
| Fundraising | No sale and no investor round |
Premine of 1.68M DCR (8% of the 21M cap): 840,000 airdropped evenly to 2,972 participants and 840,000 to Company 0 and its developers, against a current supply of about 17.66M DCR.
No sale to outside buyers. Developers paid $0.49 per premined coin out of pocket or in lieu of pay (about $415k of bring-up costs); the airdrop half was free.
10% of every block subsidy has gone to the treasury since launch (Feb 2016). It was paid to the Decred Holdings dev address until the decentralized, stakeholder-voted treasury began in 2021 (DCP-0006). The PoW/PoS split changed in 2022 (DCP-0010) and 2024 (DCP-0012), but the treasury's 10% did not. Block-issued supply is 17,660,424 - 1,680,000 premine = 15,980,424, and 10% of that is ~1.60M DCR, 9.0% of supply.
Sources: dcrdata.decred.org · docs.decred.org · github.com · docs.decred.org · docs.decred.org. Researched 2026-10-24, high confidence.
Decred is secured by 3.84 TH/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.
Decred is #47 among cryptocurrencies and #152 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 105 places between Decred'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).