NKN ranks #177 of 504 cryptocurrencies. On a list that also counts tokens, memecoins, wrapped coins, staked derivatives and stablecoins it appears at #1268: 1091 of the 1267 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 1497 non-native assets CoinSpectrum lists above it by market cap, about 73% are tokens, 21% are claims on other assets and 6% are memecoins.
| CoinSpectrum Grade | C · 55/100 · provisional |
|---|---|
| Rank among cryptocurrencies | #177 |
| Rank counting claims | #1268 |
| Market capitalisation | $5M |
| Price | $0.00581 |
| Circulating supply | 806,569,205 NKN |
| Maximum supply | 1,000,000,000 NKN |
| Consensus family | Other |
| Consensus mechanism | Proof of Relay (MOCA) |
| Network purpose | Distributed compute |
| 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.
C — 55 out of 100, provisional (from 19 of 20 criteria, 28 October 2026 build). With what is not yet measured anywhere from nothing to full marks, the score would be 52 to 57 (C to C).
| Criterion | Score | Basis |
|---|---|---|
| Leading Consensus Mechanisms (Source) | 6.4 | group average |
| Consensus: leader ladder | 6.4 | Other: 6.4 of 10 on the ladder of consensus families ranked by their largest chain's market cap |
| Consensus: family ladder | 6.4 | Other: 6.4 of 10 on the ladder of families ranked by the combined market cap of their chains |
| Cryptocurrency Standards (Source) | 4.8 | group average, 12 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 1 billion: supply scale 7.8, cap 10 |
| Durability: five years or more with no halt, freeze or reversal | ✗ | 8 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 | ✓ | no authority can freeze, blacklist or set apart a coin |
| Divisibility: the smallest unit worth a cent or less | ✓ | 8 decimal places, the smallest unit worth $5.8e-11 |
| Portability: fees of a cent or less and capacity for real demand | ✓ | typical fee $0.000067; about 205 transactions a second (5.9 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) | 2 | 1 of 5 passed source |
| Whitepaper privacy: keys are not tied to an identity | ✓ | Accounts are created from keys users generate themselves; transfers are validated by signature, with no identity condition in the protocol. |
| 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) | ✗ | Nodes relay transactions directly; no Dandelion-style relay or Tor. |
| Hidden amounts (confidential transactions, RingCT, shielded pools, Mimblewimble) | ✗ | Balances and transfers are public. |
| Hidden sender and receiver (ring signatures or zero-knowledge proofs, one-time or stealth addresses) | ✗ | Sender and receiver addresses are public. |
| 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 $0.000067 |
| Throughput (2,478 a second, the busiest network's peak day, 10; 119, the median of the ten busiest, 5) | 5.9 | about 205 simple transactions a second |
| Block time (10 minutes 10, less either side) | 4.7 | a block every 20 seconds |
| Block space per 10 minutes (32 MB or more 10) | 10 | 1.05 MB limit, 31.5 MB per 10 minutes |
| Features (3 checks) | 3.3 | 1 of 3 passed |
| Payments safe to accept within seconds | ✗ | MOCA consensus gives each block finality, but blocks arrive about every 22 s (target 20 s), so a payment cannot be final within seconds. |
| Pruned nodes: a full node can validate and drop old history | ✓ | NKN node default SyncMode "light" with state pruning keeps the current state and a RecentBlockCount window instead of full history. |
| Light clients verify payments from headers or proofs, without a trusted server | ✗ | No proof-verifying light client; SDK clients rely on nodes. |
| 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 | not mined |
| Its own hashrate: at least half its algorithm's largest, not merge-mined | ✗ | not mined |
| Largest pool or validator under 50% | ✓ | 26.24% |
| Largest three under 75% | ✓ | 59.97% |
| More than one maintained client | ✗ | 1 |
| Node software is open source | ✓ | The only full node, nknorg/nkn (Apache-2.0), is developed by the NKN core team (NKN Labs / NKN Foundation); the 2026 fix PRs were all by one core developer. |
| Real on-chain use: 1,000+ transactions a day | ✗ | about 300 a day |
| No 51% attack or deep reorganisation in five years | ✓ | |
| Programmability (tokens, contracts, 5 checks) | 2.2 | 2 of 9 points source |
| Token issuance at protocol level, validated by its own nodes | 2 | ISSUE_ASSET transaction type in the protocol since mainnet 1.0, validated by every node and open to any account (name, symbol, supply, precision). |
| Smart contracts | 0 | Fixed transaction types only (transfer, names, subscribe, nano pay, issue asset, sigchain); no script or VM. |
| Multisig and time locks | ✗ | No multisig transaction or account type in its validator; NANO_PAY expiry is a fixed payment-channel feature, not m-of-n spending. |
| Atomic swaps with other chains | ✗ | No hash-locked transaction type in the protocol. |
| 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; NKN relays off-chain data packets, not chain messages. |
| Non-fungible tokens | ✗ | ISSUE_ASSET creates fungible assets only; no NFT type. |
| Decentralisation | 4.9 | section average, 7 of 8 measured |
| Censorship resistant (Source) | 10 | No authority can halt the chain or freeze funds: No protocol-level freeze, blacklist or halt key; the 2026 recovery required operators to install new releases. source |
| No central team (Source) | 0 | A central team directs it: The only full node, nknorg/nkn (Apache-2.0), is developed by the NKN core team (NKN Labs / NKN Foundation); the 2026 fix PRs were all by one core developer. source |
| Who can mint (Source) | 1.4 | Other: 1.4 of 10 on the ladder of who produces blocks |
| Nodes (Source) | 10 | 1,523 reachable nodes (source: Distinct) |
| Holder concentration (Source) | — | Not yet measured |
| Premine (allocated at launch) | 1.3 | 86.8% of today's supply allocated at launch to founders, a company, a foundation or investors. 700,000,000 NKN were issued at genesis to one address (config InitialIssueAmount; mainnet 2019-06-29). 300M are reserved for mining rewards over 25 years. Against ~806.4M current supply, that is ~86.8%. source |
| Fundraising | 1.3 | Sold by its issuer or insiders: 86.8% of supply was theirs to sell, 43.4% sold so far. 2018 sales of 35% of the 1B supply: private 25% (~8,031 ETH + 250,100 NEO), early bird 5% (~11,111 ETH) and public 5% (2018-04-19, ~12,048 ETH). About $27M at the time. source |
| Developer share (after launch) | 10 | No developer share: every new coin goes to the miners or validators who produce blocks. No cut. The 300M mining allocation is minted as Proof-of-Relay rewards (18M in year one, falling 0.5M a year over 25 years) to signature-chain winners; the DonationAddress mechanism pays from a pre-funded donation account to miners, not to developers. source |
| Supply & Demand | 5.9 | group average |
| Supply & Demand (Source) | 4.1 | average of 6 measures |
| Exchanges (10 or more: 10) | 3 | 3 exchanges |
| Daily volume ($10K 0, $1B or more 10) | 0 | $6,010 traded in 24 hours; #2667 by volume on the exchanges the site reads (scored on the median day of the last 30, $8,849) |
| Turnover (volume ÷ market cap, 5% a day: 10) | 2.3 | 0.17% of its market cap a day, median of the last 30 days |
| Order-book depth (bids and asks within 2% ÷ market cap, 1%: 10) | 7.4 | $7,675 within 2% of the price on 2 exchanges, 0.16% of its market cap, median of the last 2 days |
| Market cap ($1M 0, $10B or more 10) | 1.7 | $4.7M, 1.7 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 1 billion |
| Record | 7.7 | 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, 2025-12-31 | ✗ | Block production stalled after block 8,843,190 (2025-12-31 23:24 UTC): about 3 blocks in the next 3.5 days and no blocks from 2026-01-05 19:04 to 2026-01-07 14:12 UTC, about 6.6 days of near-halt in all. Normal production resumed only after releases v2.2.3 ('mechanism for network reset') and v2.2.4 ('rollback and reset expected height'), which node operators had to install. Blocks had already slowed from ~24 s to ~34 s through Nov-Dec 2025. |
| Age (years since genesis) (Source) | 8 | 8 full years since 2018-05-28, 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 | ✓ | 13 commits in 1 of the last 12 months (github.com/nknorg/nkn); nknorg/nkn v2.2.5 released 2026-01-09; v2.2.2-v2.2.5 all came out between 2026-01-01 and 2026-01-09 in response to the stall, the previous release being v2.2.1 (2024-05-14). Four releases in 24 months meets 'active', though they were one burst of repairs. |
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.
806,569,205 of a maximum 1,000,000,000 NKN are in circulation — 80.7% of the total that will ever exist.
| Premine (allocated at launch) | 86.8% of today's supply |
|---|---|
| Sold by the issuer or insiders | 43.4% of today's supply |
| Developer share received since launch | 0% of today's supply |
| Developer share of new coins today | 0% |
| Nodes or validators | 1,523 |
| Fundraising | Public sale |
700,000,000 NKN were issued at genesis to one address (config InitialIssueAmount; mainnet 2019-06-29). 300M are reserved for mining rewards over 25 years. Against ~806.4M current supply, that is ~86.8%.
2018 sales of 35% of the 1B supply: private 25% (~8,031 ETH + 250,100 NEO), early bird 5% (~11,111 ETH) and public 5% (2018-04-19, ~12,048 ETH). About $27M at the time.
No cut. The 300M mining allocation is minted as Proof-of-Relay rewards (18M in year one, falling 0.5M a year over 25 years) to signature-chain winners; the DonationAddress mechanism pays from a pre-funded donation account to miners, not to developers.
The remaining 35% of genesis (foundation, team, community developers) is not split in the sources found, but it is all insider. soldPct = 350M / 806.4M.
Sources: github.com · github.com · binance.com. Researched 2026-10-26, 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.
NKN is #177 among cryptocurrencies and #1268 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 1091 places between NKN'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).