Namecoin ranks #123 of 504 cryptocurrencies. On a list that also counts tokens, memecoins, wrapped coins, staked derivatives and stablecoins it appears at #658: 535 of the 657 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 833 non-native assets CoinSpectrum lists above it by market cap, about 63% are tokens, 28% are claims on other assets and 9% are memecoins.
| CoinSpectrum Grade | A · 79/100 · provisional |
|---|---|
| Rank among cryptocurrencies | #123 |
| Rank counting claims | #658 |
| Market capitalisation | $22M |
| Price | $1.46 |
| Circulating supply | 14,736,400 NMC |
| Maximum supply | no fixed cap |
| Consensus family | Proof of Work |
| Consensus mechanism | SHA-256 (merge-mined with BTC) |
| Own hashrate | — |
| 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 — 79 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 75 to 81 (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) | 7.8 | group average, 12 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 | 4.9 | no fixed maximum; 14.7 million in circulation: supply scale 9.7, cap 0 |
| Durability: five years or more with no halt, freeze or reversal | ✓ | 13 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 | ✓ | 8 decimal places, the smallest unit worth $1.5e-8 |
| Portability: fees of a cent or less and capacity for real demand | ✗ | 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 | ✓ | 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) | ✗ | Namecoin Core (Bitcoin Core base) uses Tor/I2P only if the user configures them; no Dandelion. |
| Hidden amounts (confidential transactions, RingCT, shielded pools, Mimblewimble) | ✗ | Amounts are public. |
| Hidden sender and receiver (ring signatures or zero-knowledge proofs, one-time or stealth addresses) | ✗ | Addresses are public. |
| Scalability (fees, throughput, block time, block space, features) | 6.1 | average of 4 parts source |
| Fees ($0.001 or less 10, $1 or more 0) | – | not yet measured |
| 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) | 9.9 | a block every 9.1 minutes |
| Block space per 10 minutes (32 MB or more 10) | 6.6 | 4 MB limit, 4.39 MB per 10 minutes |
| Features (3 checks) | 6.7 | 2 of 3 passed |
| Payments safe to accept within seconds | ✗ | Blocks are 10 minutes apart and Namecoin Core inherits Bitcoin Core's mempool policy, including full replace-by-fee, so zero-confirmation acceptance is unprotected. |
| Pruned nodes: a full node can validate and drop old history | ✓ | Namecoin Core inherits Bitcoin Core's -prune (0.11+). |
| Light clients verify payments from headers or proofs, without a trusted server | ✓ | Merge-mined Bitcoin-format headers with Merkle roots support SPV verification (Bitcoin §8). |
| Security (miner pay and 7 checks) | 4.5 | 3 of 6 points, 3 not yet measured source |
| Miners paid a day ($1,000 0, $10 million or more 10), 2 points | – | |
| Its own hashrate: at least half its algorithm's largest, not merge-mined | ✗ | merge-mined: its blocks are found by another chain's miners |
| Largest pool or validator under 50% | ✓ | 43.3% |
| Largest three under 75% | ✗ | 99.3% |
| More than one maintained client | ✗ | 1 |
| Node software is open source | ✓ | Namecoin Core (MIT) is maintained by a small group of volunteer developers (Daniel Kraft, Jeremy Rand and others), with no controlling company. |
| Real on-chain use: 1,000+ transactions 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 Core-derived Script with name operations; spending conditions only. |
| Multisig and time locks | ✓ | OP_CHECKMULTISIG plus BIP65 CLTV (height 335,000) and CSV buried deployments. |
| Atomic swaps with other chains | ✓ | HTLCs expressible with CLTV; NMC is swap-enabled in the Komodo coin list. |
| An exchange built into the protocol | ✗ | No exchange in the protocol. |
| Cross-chain messaging the chain verifies itself | ✗ | Merge-mined with Bitcoin, but no messaging to other chains. |
| Non-fungible tokens | ✗ | Names (name_new/name_firstupdate/name_update) are unique consensus records but not a general non-fungible token type, the same as Handshake names. |
| Decentralisation | 9.7 | section average, 7 of 8 measured |
| Censorship resistant (Source) | 10 | No authority can halt the chain or freeze funds: No party can freeze or claw back NMC or names. source |
| No central team (Source) | 10 | No central team: Namecoin Core (MIT) is maintained by a small group of volunteer developers (Daniel Kraft, Jeremy Rand and others), with no controlling company. source |
| Who can mint (Source) | 10 | Proof of work: 10 of 10 on the ladder of who produces blocks |
| Nodes (Source) | 7.6 | 187 reachable nodes (distinct IP addresses at the chain's tip, crawled by CoinSpectrum on 2026-10-27; clearnet only) |
| 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 | 5.3 | group average |
| Supply & Demand (Source) | 0.8 | average of 4 measures |
| Exchanges (10 or more: 10) | 0 | no exchange the site reads trades it |
| Daily volume ($10K 0, $1B or more 10) | 0 | $3 traded in 24 hours; #4217 by volume |
| Turnover (volume ÷ market cap, 5% a day: 10) | 0 | 0.00% of its market cap a day |
| Order-book depth (bids and asks within 2% ÷ market cap, 1%: 10) | – | no order book on the nine exchanges read |
| Market cap ($1M 0, $10B or more 10) | 3.3 | $22M, 3.3 on a scale of 2.5 points per tenfold |
| Paper trading (futures, options and margin ÷ market cap, 0%: 10, 100%: 0) | – | not measured |
| Supply (smaller is better) | 9.7 | no fixed maximum; 14.7 million in circulation |
| Record | 9 | 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 | 13 full years since 2013-04-28, 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 | ✓ | 17 commits in 6 of the last 12 months (github.com/namecoin/namecoin-core); Namecoin Core 31.1 released 2026-07-13 (31.0 Apr 2026, 30.2 Jan 2026). |
| Shipped a security fix in two years, +1 | ✓ | Namecoin Core nc28.0 (Dec 2024) and nc29.1/nc30.1 (Sep–Dec 2025) rebased on Bitcoin Core 28–30, carrying Core's disclosed security fixes. |
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.
14,736,400 NMC 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.
No source we can reach publishes a hashrate for Namecoin.
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.
Namecoin is #123 among cryptocurrencies and #658 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 535 places between Namecoin'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).