Grin ranks #194 of 504 cryptocurrencies. On a list that also counts tokens, memecoins, wrapped coins, staked derivatives and stablecoins it appears at #1473: 1279 of the 1472 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 1706 non-native assets CoinSpectrum lists above it by market cap, about 75% are tokens, 20% are claims on other assets and 6% are memecoins.
| CoinSpectrum Grade | A · 78/100 · provisional |
|---|---|
| Rank among cryptocurrencies | #194 |
| Rank counting claims | #1473 |
| Market capitalisation | $3M |
| Price | $0.0120 |
| Circulating supply | 244,935,420 GRIN |
| Maximum supply | no fixed cap |
| Consensus family | Proof of Work |
| Consensus mechanism | Cuckatoo32 (MimbleWimble) |
| Own hashrate | 3.72 kH/s |
| Network purpose | Private payments |
| Ledger type | Single-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 — 78 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 70 to 81 (B 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) | 7.7 | group average, 11 of 13 measured |
| Sound Money Qualities (6 checks) | 7.3 | 4.4 of 6 points source |
| Scarcity: a fixed cap that holds, and a supply near 21 million | 4.3 | no fixed maximum; 245 million in circulation: supply scale 8.6, cap 0 |
| Durability: five years or more with no halt, freeze or reversal | ✓ | 7 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 $1.2e-11 |
| Portability: fees of a cent or less and capacity for real demand | ✗ | typical fee $0.000067; about 15 transactions a second (1.5 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; pruned nodes validate everything |
| Privacy (5 checks) | 8 | 4 of 5 passed source |
| Whitepaper privacy: keys are not tied to an identity | ✓ | Mimblewimble outputs are Pedersen commitments controlled by blinding factors users generate; there are no accounts or identities. |
| 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) | ✓ | Grin node relays transactions through Dandelion stem/fluff by default (stem_probability 90, always_stem_our_txs in the default config). |
| Hidden amounts (confidential transactions, RingCT, shielded pools, Mimblewimble) | ✓ | Mimblewimble Pedersen commitments with range proofs hide every amount since launch (2019). |
| Hidden sender and receiver (ring signatures or zero-knowledge proofs, one-time or stealth addresses) | ✗ | Outputs carry no addresses, but there are no ring signatures or ZK proofs hiding which outputs a transaction spends, so the brief's two-part test is not met. |
| Scalability (fees, throughput, block time, block space, features) | 5.9 | average of 5 parts source |
| Fees ($0.001 or less 10, $1 or more 0) | 10 | typical fee $0.000067 |
| Throughput (2,478 a second, the busiest network's peak day, 10; 119, the median of the ten busiest, 5) | 1.5 | about 14.5 simple transactions a second |
| Block time (10 minutes 10, less either side) | 6.4 | a block every 1 minute |
| Block space per 10 minutes (32 MB or more 10) | 8.5 | 1.37 MB limit (converted from its gas, compute, mass or count limit), 13.7 MB per 10 minutes |
| Features (3 checks) | 3.3 | 1 of 3 passed |
| Payments safe to accept within seconds | ✗ | One-minute blocks with probabilistic confirmation; transactions are interactive and there is no protected zero-confirmation or instant-lock mechanism. |
| Pruned nodes: a full node can validate and drop old history | ✓ | Default node mode is fast-sync and pruned (keeps UTXO set, kernels and recent blocks); archive_mode is opt-in. |
| Light clients verify payments from headers or proofs, without a trusted server | ✗ | No light-client protocol; wallets trust their node. |
| Security (miner pay and 7 checks) | 3.9 | 3 of 7 points, 2 not yet measured source |
| Miners paid a day ($1,000 0, $10 million or more 10), 2 points | 0 | about $1,036 a day |
| Its own hashrate: at least half its algorithm's largest, not merge-mined | ✓ | |
| Largest pool or validator under 50% | – | |
| Largest three under 75% | – | |
| More than one maintained client | ✗ | 1 |
| Node software is open source | ✓ | The Rust reference node is maintained by volunteer core and community developers funded by donations (no company or foundation employer); Grin++ is a separate C++ implementation by an independent developer. |
| Real on-chain use: 1,000+ transactions a day | ✗ | about 126 a day |
| No 51% attack or deep reorganisation in five years | ✓ | |
| Programmability (tokens, contracts, 5 checks) | 0 | 0 of 9 points source |
| Token issuance | 0 | No token issuance on the chain itself |
| Smart contracts | 0 | Mimblewimble has no script; the only spending conditions are signatures and kernel lock heights (fixed kernel types). |
| Multisig and time locks | ✗ | Height-locked and relative (NRD) kernels give time locks, but multiparty outputs are n-of-n only; no m-of-n threshold spending. |
| Atomic swaps with other chains | ✗ | No hash locks; Grin's docs describe a scriptless atomic-swap construction, but no working implementation in the reference wallet was found. |
| An exchange built into the protocol | ✗ | No exchange in the protocol. |
| Cross-chain messaging the chain verifies itself | ✗ | No cross-chain feature in the protocol. |
| Non-fungible tokens | ✗ | No token or NFT type in the protocol. |
| Decentralisation | 10 | section average, 6 of 8 measured |
| Censorship resistant (Source) | 10 | No authority can halt the chain or freeze funds: No protocol party can freeze or claw back coins or halt the chain. source |
| No central team (Source) | 10 | No central team: The Rust reference node is maintained by volunteer core and community developers funded by donations (no company or foundation employer); Grin++ is a separate C++ implementation by an independent developer. 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 | Fair launch: no premine |
| Fundraising | 10 | No sale of the coin |
| Developer share (after launch) | 10 | No developer share: every new coin goes to the miners who produce blocks |
| Supply & Demand | 5.6 | group average |
| Supply & Demand (Source) | 2.6 | average of 6 measures |
| Exchanges (10 or more: 10) | 1 | 1 exchange |
| Daily volume ($10K 0, $1B or more 10) | 0 | $961 traded in 24 hours; #3128 by volume on the exchanges the site reads (scored on the median day of the last 30, $2,050) |
| Turnover (volume ÷ market cap, 5% a day: 10) | 0 | 0.07% of its market cap a day, median of the last 30 days |
| Order-book depth (bids and asks within 2% ÷ market cap, 1%: 10) | 3.5 | $335 within 2% of the price on 1 exchange, 0.01% of its market cap, median of the last 2 days |
| Market cap ($1M 0, $10B or more 10) | 1.2 | $2.9M, 1.2 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) | 8.6 | no fixed maximum; 245 million in circulation |
| 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) | 7 | 7 full years since 2019-01-27, 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 source |
| Positive | ||
| Steady work, 6 of 6 | ✓ | 103 commits in 10 of the last 12 months (github.com/mimblewimble/grin); Reference node mimblewimble/grin v5.5.2 released 2026-10-09 (v5.4.0 March 2026, v5.5.0 June 2026, v5.5.1 August 2026). |
| Shipped a security fix in two years, +1 | ✓ | Grin 5.4.0, Mar 2026: mandatory fix for critical vulnerabilities (unchecked commit_parse return value in rust-secp256k1-zkp) that could combine to allow inflation. |
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.
244,935,420 GRIN are in circulation, against no fixed cap — issuance has no defined end.
No premine. No premine, no founder allocation, no public sale — the chain started empty and every coin was earned through mining or validating.
Grin is secured by 3.72 kH/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.
Grin is #194 among cryptocurrencies and #1473 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 1279 places between Grin'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).