Handshake ranks #192 of 504 cryptocurrencies. On a list that also counts tokens, memecoins, wrapped coins, staked derivatives and stablecoins it appears at #1470: 1278 of the 1469 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 1704 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 | B · 73/100 · provisional |
|---|---|
| Rank among cryptocurrencies | #192 |
| Rank counting claims | #1470 |
| Market capitalisation | $3M |
| Price | $0.00435 |
| Circulating supply | 677,730,457 HNS |
| Maximum supply | 961,271,165 HNS |
| Consensus family | Proof of Work |
| Consensus mechanism | Blake2b + SHA3 |
| Own hashrate | 514 TH/s |
| Network purpose | General purpose |
| Ledger type | Single-asset ledger |
| Launch distribution | Presale |
Market figures from the 28 October 2026 build. Open the live view for every exchange's price, and charts.
B — 73 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 66 to 76 (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) | 7.2 | group average, 11 of 13 measured |
| Sound Money Qualities (6 checks) | 8.2 | 4.9 of 6 points source |
| Scarcity: a fixed cap that holds, and a supply near 21 million | 8.9 | fixed maximum supply of 961 million: supply scale 7.8, 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 | ✓ | 6 decimal places, the smallest unit worth $4.3e-9 |
| Portability: fees of a cent or less and capacity for real demand | ✗ | typical fee $2e-7; about 12 transactions a second (1.2 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 | ✓ | Addresses are hashes of keys users generate themselves; the node checks scripts and signatures, with no identity condition in its consensus rules. |
| 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) | ✗ | hsd relays transactions directly; no Dandelion or built-in Tor. |
| Hidden amounts (confidential transactions, RingCT, shielded pools, Mimblewimble) | ✗ | Transparent UTXO amounts (blinded bids apply only to name auctions). |
| Hidden sender and receiver (ring signatures or zero-knowledge proofs, one-time or stealth addresses) | ✗ | Transparent addresses; no ring signatures or stealth addresses. |
| Scalability (fees, throughput, block time, block space, features) | 7.5 | average of 5 parts source |
| Fees ($0.001 or less 10, $1 or more 0) | 10 | typical fee $2e-7 |
| Throughput (2,478 a second, the busiest network's peak day, 10; 119, the median of the ten busiest, 5) | 1.2 | about 12 simple transactions a second |
| Block time (10 minutes 10, less either side) | 10 | a block every 10 minutes |
| Block space per 10 minutes (32 MB or more 10) | 6.4 | 4 MB limit |
| Features (3 checks) | 10 | 3 of 3 passed |
| Payments safe to accept within seconds | ✓ | hsd's mempool rejects any transaction spending an input already in the mempool (bad-txns-inputs-spent) and has no replace-by-fee, so it relays first-seen; blocks are 10 minutes and there are no double-spend proofs. |
| Pruned nodes: a full node can validate and drop old history | ✓ | hsd full node has a prune option that discards old block data. |
| Light clients verify payments from headers or proofs, without a trusted server | ✓ | hsd includes an SPV node (lib/node/spvnode.js) verifying headers and Merkle/Urkel proofs. |
| 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 $313 a day |
| Its own hashrate: at least half its algorithm's largest, not merge-mined | ✗ | |
| Largest pool or validator under 50% | ✓ | 45.5% |
| Largest three under 75% | ✗ | 98.5% |
| More than one maintained client | ✗ | 1 |
| Node software is open source | ✓ | hsd is maintained by volunteer contributors in the handshake-org GitHub organisation under the MIT licence; no company controls it. |
| Real on-chain use: 1,000+ transactions a day | ✓ | about 4,144 a day |
| No 51% attack or deep reorganisation in five years | ✓ | |
| Programmability (tokens, contracts, 5 checks) | 3.3 | 3 of 9 points source |
| Token issuance | 0 | No token issuance on the chain itself |
| Smart contracts: scripting for spending conditions | 1 | Bitcoin-style Script plus fixed name covenants (auctions, transfers, records); no general-purpose contracts. |
| Multisig and time locks | ✓ | OP_CHECKMULTISIG, OP_CHECKLOCKTIMEVERIFY and OP_CHECKSEQUENCEVERIFY in hsd's script engine. |
| Atomic swaps with other chains | ✓ | Script can express HTLCs (hash check, including OP_SHA3/OP_BLAKE, plus CLTV/CSV refund). |
| An exchange built into the protocol | ✗ | No exchange in the protocol; name sales use signed partial transactions arranged off-chain. |
| Cross-chain messaging the chain verifies itself | ✗ | No cross-chain feature in the protocol. |
| Non-fungible tokens | ✗ | Names are unique, transferable ledger objects under covenants, but there is no general token or NFT type that users issue; medium confidence on whether names should count. |
| Decentralisation | 8.7 | section average, 6 of 8 measured |
| Censorship resistant (Source) | 10 | No authority can halt the chain or freeze funds: No protocol-level party can freeze or claw back coins or halt the chain; reserved-name and airdrop rules are fixed in consensus. source |
| No central team (Source) | 10 | No central team: hsd is maintained by volunteer contributors in the handshake-org GitHub organisation under the MIT licence; 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) | 6.2 | 38% of today's supply allocated at launch to founders, a company, a foundation or investors. The consensus code pre-allocates 1.36B of the 2.04B cap: airdrop to FOSS developers 952M, creators (pre-development team) 102M, sponsors 102M, CA/naming 102M, TLD holders 51M and domain holders 51M. All are claim-based. As of block 239,664 (2024-08-25), 690.9M had been issued against ~409.7M mined, so ~281M was claimed allocations. With ~517M mined by now and at least 63M burned, ~281M / ~735M = about 38%. source |
| Fundraising | 6.2 | Sold by its issuer or insiders: 38% of supply was theirs to sell, 14% sold so far. $10.2M from sponsors (a16z, SV Angel, Draper Associates and others) for 102M HNS at $0.10. The proceeds were donated to FOSS projects and non-profits. source |
| Developer share (after launch) | 10 | No developer share: every new coin goes to the miners or validators who produce blocks. All block subsidies go to miners. The claim-based allocations (FOSS airdrop, creators, sponsors, names) are genesis premine, not a cut of issuance. source |
| Supply & Demand | 4.9 | group average |
| Supply & Demand (Source) | 2 | average of 6 measures |
| Exchanges (10 or more: 10) | 1 | 1 exchange |
| Daily volume ($10K 0, $1B or more 10) | 0 | $5,946 traded in 24 hours; #3415 by volume on the exchanges the site reads (scored on the median day of the last 30, $833) |
| Turnover (volume ÷ market cap, 5% a day: 10) | 0 | 0.02% of its market cap a day, median of the last 30 days |
| Order-book depth (bids and asks within 2% ÷ market cap, 1%: 10) | 0 | $0 within 2% of the price on 1 exchange, 0.00% 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) | 7.8 | fixed maximum supply of 961 million |
| Record | 7.3 | 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 2020-02-21, the first day with a recorded price (genesis not yet researched, so the age can only be understated). |
| Development (work, improvements, unfixed issues) | 6 | 1 positive, 0 negative source |
| Positive | ||
| Steady work, 6 of 6 | ✓ | 0 commits in 0 of the last 12 months (github.com/handshake-org/hsd); hsd v8.0.0 released 2025-07-01, after v7.0.0 (2024-12-09) and v7.0.1 (2024-12-27): three releases in the last 24 months, none since July 2025. |
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.
677,730,457 of a maximum 961,271,165 HNS are in circulation — 70.5% of the total that will ever exist.
| Premine (allocated at launch) | 38% of today's supply |
|---|---|
| Sold by the issuer or insiders | 14% 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 |
The consensus code pre-allocates 1.36B of the 2.04B cap: airdrop to FOSS developers 952M, creators (pre-development team) 102M, sponsors 102M, CA/naming 102M, TLD holders 51M and domain holders 51M. All are claim-based. As of block 239,664 (2024-08-25), 690.9M had been issued against ~409.7M mined, so ~281M was claimed allocations. With ~517M mined by now and at least 63M burned, ~281M / ~735M = about 38%.
$10.2M from sponsors (a16z, SV Angel, Draper Associates and others) for 102M HNS at $0.10. The proceeds were donated to FOSS projects and non-profits.
All block subsidies go to miners. The claim-based allocations (FOSS airdrop, creators, sponsors, names) are genesis premine, not a cut of issuance.
The current-supply figures are estimated from the August 2024 HIP data plus elapsed blocks; no live explorer API answered. A 2024 proposal (HIP) would burn the unclaimed airdrop and name claims, lowering the cap to ~898M; adoption was not confirmed. The site's max of 961M may reflect a similar adjustment.
Sources: github.com · heytx.substack.com · blockchannel.substack.com. Researched 2026-10-24, high confidence.
Handshake is secured by 514 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.
Handshake is #192 among cryptocurrencies and #1470 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 1278 places between Handshake'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).