Ergo ranks #113 of 504 cryptocurrencies. On a list that also counts tokens, memecoins, wrapped coins, staked derivatives and stablecoins it appears at #753: 640 of the 752 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 752 non-native assets CoinSpectrum lists above it by market cap, about 62% are tokens, 29% are claims on other assets and 9% are memecoins.
| CoinSpectrum Grade | A+ · 83/100 · provisional |
|---|---|
| Rank among cryptocurrencies | #113 |
| Rank counting claims | #753 |
| Market capitalisation | $25M |
| Price | $0.3032 |
| Circulating supply | 83,512,053 ERG |
| Maximum supply | no fixed cap |
| Consensus family | Proof of Work |
| Consensus mechanism | Autolykos v2 |
| Own hashrate | 523 GH/s |
| Ledger type | Multi-asset ledger |
| Launch distribution | No premine |
Market figures from the 28 October 2026 build. Open the live view for every exchange's price, and charts.
A+ — 83 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 75 to 85 (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) | 8.1 | group average, 11 of 13 measured |
| Sound Money Qualities (6 checks) | 7.5 | 4.5 of 6 points source |
| Scarcity: a fixed cap that holds, and a supply near 21 million | 4.6 | no fixed maximum; 83.5 million in circulation: supply scale 9.2, cap 0 |
| Durability: five years or more with no halt, freeze or reversal | ✓ | 9 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 | ✓ | 9 decimal places, the smallest unit worth $3.0e-10 |
| Portability: fees of a cent or less and capacity for real demand | ✗ | typical fee $0.0003; about 26 transactions a second (2.5 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; light clients verify from headers or proofs |
| Privacy (5 checks) | 4 | 2 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) | ✗ | The Ergo node gossips transactions directly; no Dandelion or built-in Tor. |
| Hidden amounts (confidential transactions, RingCT, shielded pools, Mimblewimble) | ✗ | Amounts are public on the UTXO chain. |
| Hidden sender and receiver (ring signatures or zero-knowledge proofs, one-time or stealth addresses) | ✗ | Sigma protocols allow ring signatures in scripts, but there are no protocol stealth addresses; mixing (ErgoMixer) is an application. |
| Scalability (fees, throughput, block time, block space, features) | 6.8 | average of 5 parts source |
| Fees ($0.001 or less 10, $1 or more 0) | 10 | typical fee $0.0003 |
| Throughput (2,478 a second, the busiest network's peak day, 10; 119, the median of the ten busiest, 5) | 2.5 | about 26 simple transactions a second |
| Block time (10 minutes 10, less either side) | 7.5 | a block every 2 minutes |
| Block space per 10 minutes (32 MB or more 10) | 7.2 | 1.27 MB limit, 6.36 MB per 10 minutes |
| Features (3 checks) | 6.7 | 2 of 3 passed |
| Payments safe to accept within seconds | ✗ | Blocks are about 2 minutes apart with probabilistic finality, and the mempool lets a higher-fee double-spend replace an unconfirmed transaction. |
| Pruned nodes: a full node can validate and drop old history | ✓ | Ergo node pruned mode (stateType=utxo, blocksToKeep > 0) with UTXO-set snapshot bootstrapping. |
| Light clients verify payments from headers or proofs, without a trusted server | ✓ | Protocol-level NiPoPoW proofs let a light SPV client bootstrap and validate the header chain and check transactions against headers. |
| Security (miner pay and 7 checks) | 4 | 4 of 9 points source |
| Miners paid a day ($1,000 0, $10 million or more 10), 2 points | 0 | about $655 a day |
| Its own hashrate: at least half its algorithm's largest, not merge-mined | ✓ | |
| Largest pool or validator under 50% | ✗ | 51.3% |
| Largest three under 75% | ✗ | 77.6% |
| More than one maintained client | ✗ | 1 |
| Node software is open source | ✓ | The reference node (ergoplatform/ergo, CC0) is maintained by core developers funded by the Ergo Foundation alongside independent community contributors; no company controls it. |
| Real on-chain use: 1,000+ transactions a day | ✓ | about 4,580 a day |
| No 51% attack or deep reorganisation in five years | ✓ | |
| Programmability (tokens, contracts, 5 checks) | 7.8 | 7 of 9 points source |
| Token issuance at protocol level, validated by its own nodes | 2 | Native tokens in the UTXO protocol since launch in 2019: any transaction can mint a token, with the EIP-4 metadata convention. |
| Smart contracts: a general-purpose contract system | 2 | ErgoScript contracts on the eUTXO model since the 2019 mainnet, with DEXes and stablecoins built on them. |
| Multisig and time locks | ✓ | Sigma-protocol threshold signatures (atLeast) and HEIGHT conditions in ErgoScript. |
| Atomic swaps with other chains | ✓ | Hash- and height-locked ErgoScript contracts express HTLCs. |
| An exchange built into the protocol | ✗ | No exchange in the protocol; Spectrum and other DEXes are contracts. |
| Cross-chain messaging the chain verifies itself | ✗ | No protocol-level cross-chain messaging; Rosen Bridge is run by a watcher and guard set. |
| Non-fungible tokens | ✓ | Native tokens with a supply of one, with NFT categories in the EIP-4 asset standard. |
| Decentralisation | 9.9 | section average, 6 of 8 measured |
| Censorship resistant (Source) | 10 | No authority can halt the chain or freeze funds: No party can freeze or claw back ERG. source |
| No central team (Source) | 10 | No central team: The reference node (ergoplatform/ergo, CC0) is maintained by core developers funded by the Ergo Foundation alongside independent community contributors; no company controls it. 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 to insiders beyond the Foundation treasury, which was released per block alongside mining over the first ~2.5 years and is now scored as a block-reward cut. No sale or instamine. source |
| Fundraising | 10 | No sale of the coin source |
| Developer share (after launch) | 9.5 | Developer share: about 5.2% of today's supply received so far; no share of new block rewards today. 4,330,791.5 ERG (4.43% of the 97.74M emission) went to the Ergo Foundation treasury. The coins sat in a genesis box but were released block by block by contract alongside the miners' emission (7.5 ERG of the 75 ERG per block at the start), over the first ~2.5 years, ending in 2021. That works like a founders' reward. 4.33M / 83.50M current supply = 5.2%. EIP-27 re-emission (since 2022) holds back part of the miner reward and pays it to later miners, so it is not a cut. source |
| Supply & Demand | 7 | group average |
| Supply & Demand (Source) | 4.7 | average of 6 measures |
| Exchanges (10 or more: 10) | 4 | 4 exchanges |
| Daily volume ($10K 0, $1B or more 10) | 2.3 | $121,072 traded in 24 hours; #1447 by volume on the exchanges the site reads (scored on the median day of the last 30, $137,833) |
| Turnover (volume ÷ market cap, 5% a day: 10) | 4.8 | 0.51% of its market cap a day, median of the last 30 days |
| Order-book depth (bids and asks within 2% ÷ market cap, 1%: 10) | 3.8 | $3,453 within 2% of the price on 3 exchanges, 0.01% of its market cap, median of the last 2 days |
| Market cap ($1M 0, $10B or more 10) | 3.5 | $25M, 3.5 on a scale of 2.5 points per tenfold |
| Paper trading (futures, options and margin ÷ market cap, 0%: 10, 100%: 0) | 10 | no futures, options or margin on the exchanges read |
| Supply (smaller is better) | 9.2 | no fixed maximum; 83.5 million in circulation |
| 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) | 9 | 9 full years since 2017-06-29, the first day with a recorded price (genesis not yet researched, so the age can only be understated). |
| Development (work, improvements, unfixed issues) | 7 | 2 positive, 0 negative, 1 not yet researched source |
| Positive | ||
| Steady work, 6 of 6 | ✓ | 388 commits in 12 of the last 12 months (github.com/ergoplatform/ergo); Ergo reference client 6.0.8 released 2026-10-13 (6.1.7 2026-10-01). |
| Shipped a new capability for users in two years, +1 | ✓ | Sigma 6.0 soft fork (EIP-50), activated Oct 2025: new ErgoScript types and methods (unsigned big integers, BLS verification, etc.); block version 4 on chain. |
| Not yet researched | ||
| Shipped a scaling upgrade 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.
83,512,053 ERG are in circulation, against no fixed cap — issuance has no defined end.
| Premine (allocated at launch) | 0% of today's supply |
|---|---|
| Developer share received since launch | 5.2% of today's supply |
| Developer share of new coins today | 0% |
| Fundraising | No sale and no investor round |
No genesis allocation to insiders beyond the Foundation treasury, which was released per block alongside mining over the first ~2.5 years and is now scored as a block-reward cut. No sale or instamine.
No ICO and no sale. Development was funded by the treasury share of block rewards.
4,330,791.5 ERG (4.43% of the 97.74M emission) went to the Ergo Foundation treasury. The coins sat in a genesis box but were released block by block by contract alongside the miners' emission (7.5 ERG of the 75 ERG per block at the start), over the first ~2.5 years, ending in 2021. That works like a founders' reward. 4.33M / 83.50M current supply = 5.2%. EIP-27 re-emission (since 2022) holds back part of the miner reward and pays it to later miners, so it is not a cut.
The treasury is a founders' reward paid out of emission, so it counts as an insider allocation. The Foundation has spent treasury ERG on development, but no breakdown of market sales was found, so soldPct is left null.
Sources: docs.ergoplatform.com · github.com · api.ergoplatform.com. Researched 2026-10-24, high confidence.
Ergo is secured by 523 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.
Ergo is #113 among cryptocurrencies and #753 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 640 places between Ergo'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).