Pirate Chain ranks #99 of 504 cryptocurrencies. On a list that also counts tokens, memecoins, wrapped coins, staked derivatives and stablecoins it appears at #578: 479 of the 577 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 577 non-native assets CoinSpectrum lists above it by market cap, about 59% are tokens, 32% are claims on other assets and 9% are memecoins.
| CoinSpectrum Grade | B · 69/100 · provisional |
|---|---|
| Rank among cryptocurrencies | #99 |
| Rank counting claims | #578 |
| Market capitalisation | $37M |
| Price | $0.1899 |
| Circulating supply | 196,213,798 ARRR |
| Maximum supply | no fixed cap |
| Consensus family | Proof of Work |
| Consensus mechanism | Equihash (privacy) |
| Own hashrate | 1.20 MH/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.
B — 69 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 62 to 74 (C 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) | 6.5 | group average, 11 of 13 measured |
| Sound Money Qualities (6 checks) | 2.8 | 1.4 of 5 points, 1 not yet measured source |
| Scarcity: a fixed cap that holds, and a supply near 21 million | 4.4 | no fixed maximum; 196 million in circulation: supply scale 8.7, cap 0 |
| Durability: five years or more with no halt, freeze or reversal | ✗ | 7 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 | ✗ | an authority can freeze funds: In Oct 2026 the developers had exchanges and pools pause and shipped a mandatory release that discards the chain built on ~39.8M unbacked ARRR, first announced as a unilateral rollback. |
| Divisibility: the smallest unit worth a cent or less | ✓ | 8 decimal places, the smallest unit worth $1.9e-9 |
| Portability: fees of a cent or less and capacity for real demand | ✗ | typical fee $0.00002; about 14 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 |
| Privacy (5 checks) | 8 | 4 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 Komodo-derived pirated node uses Tor only through user-configured proxy settings; no Dandelion-style relay appears in its releases. |
| Hidden amounts (confidential transactions, RingCT, shielded pools, Mimblewimble) | ✓ | zk-SNARK shielded (Sapling) transactions are mandatory since transparent sends were disabled; the Ironwood fork (6.0.x, Oct 2026) adds a Halo 2 shielded pool. |
| Hidden sender and receiver (ring signatures or zero-knowledge proofs, one-time or stealth addresses) | ✓ | Shielded notes hide sender and receiver via zero-knowledge proofs and shielded addresses for every transaction. |
| Scalability (fees, throughput, block time, block space, features) | 5.4 | average of 5 parts source |
| Fees ($0.001 or less 10, $1 or more 0) | 10 | typical fee $0.00002 |
| Throughput (2,478 a second, the busiest network's peak day, 10; 119, the median of the ten busiest, 5) | 1.5 | about 14 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) | 9.2 | 2 MB limit, 20 MB per 10 minutes |
| Features (3 checks) | 0 | 0 of 2 passed, 1 not yet researched |
| Payments safe to accept within seconds | ✗ | One-minute blocks with Komodo dPoW notarisation every ~10 minutes; no protected zero-confirmation. |
| Pruned nodes: a full node can validate and drop old history | – | Pruning support for pirated was not documented in its releases. |
| Light clients verify payments from headers or proofs, without a trusted server | ✗ | Pirate lite wallets use the lightwalletd model of ZIP 307, which trusts the server for the best chain; no shipped wallet verifies headers. |
| Security (miner pay and 7 checks) | 2.6 | 2 of 7 points, 2 not yet measured source |
| Miners paid a day ($1,000 0, $10 million or more 10), 2 points | 0 | about $68 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 | ✓ | A small community team of volunteer developers maintains PirateNetwork/pirate (a Komodo-based fork); no company or foundation. |
| Real on-chain use: 1,000+ transactions a day | ✗ | about 531 a day |
| No 51% attack or deep reorganisation in five years | ✓ | |
| Programmability (tokens, contracts, 5 checks) | 2.5 | 2 of 8 points, 1 not yet researched source |
| Token issuance | 0 | No token issuance on the chain itself |
| Smart contracts: scripting for spending conditions | 1 | Shielded-only Komodo chain; transparent outputs are invalid except notary outputs and, since notary season 6, a P2SH output with its redeem script revealed, funded from Sapling (the ZHTLC route). |
| Multisig and time locks | – | Not established: general transparent multisig use is barred by the private-chain rule, and only the narrow revealed-redeem-script P2SH exception remains. |
| Atomic swaps with other chains | ✓ | The revealed-redeem-script P2SH exception carries Komodo's ZHTLC swaps; ARRR is swap-enabled (protocol ZHTLC) in the Komodo coin list. |
| An exchange built into the protocol | ✗ | No exchange in the protocol. |
| Cross-chain messaging the chain verifies itself | ✗ | Komodo dPoW notarisation writes checkpoints elsewhere but carries no messages or assets. |
| Non-fungible tokens | ✗ | Launched without CryptoConditions token modules; outputs carry only ARRR. |
| Decentralisation | 8.3 | section average, 6 of 8 measured |
| Censorship resistant (Source) | 0 | An authority can halt the chain or freeze funds: In Oct 2026 the developers had exchanges and pools pause and shipped a mandatory release that discards the chain built on ~39.8M unbacked ARRR, first announced as a unilateral rollback. source |
| No central team (Source) | 10 | No central team: A small community team of volunteer developers maintains PirateNetwork/pirate (a Komodo-based fork); no company or foundation. 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 | 6.8 | group average |
| Supply & Demand (Source) | 4.8 | average of 6 measures |
| Exchanges (10 or more: 10) | 3 | 3 exchanges |
| Daily volume ($10K 0, $1B or more 10) | 3.1 | $353,055 traded in 24 hours; #998 by volume on the exchanges the site reads (scored on the median day of the last 30, $375,262) |
| Turnover (volume ÷ market cap, 5% a day: 10) | 5.7 | 0.76% 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 | $2,908 within 2% of the price on 2 exchanges, 0.01% of its market cap, median of the last 2 days |
| Market cap ($1M 0, $10B or more 10) | 3.9 | $37M, 3.9 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) | 8.7 | no fixed maximum; 196 million in circulation |
| Record | 6.7 | 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, 2026-10-14 | ✗ | After two Ironwood validation flaws let ~39.8M unbacked ARRR (~20% of supply) be minted, the team asked exchanges and pools to pause and shipped mandatory consensus release 6.0.10 that rejects the invalid blocks, so nodes discard the chain built on them (a unilateral rollback was first announced, then replaced by this coordinated fork). |
| Age (years since genesis) (Source) | 7 | 7 full years since 2019-05-22, the first day with a recorded price (genesis not yet researched, so the age can only be understated). |
| Development (work, improvements, unfixed issues) | 4 | 3 positive, 4 negative source |
| Positive | ||
| Steady work, 6 of 6 | ✓ | 397 commits in 12 of the last 12 months (github.com/PirateNetwork/pirate); PirateNetwork/pirate v6.0.14, 2026-10-21 (mandatory security release 6.0.10 in Oct 2026); 7 releases in 24 months. |
| Shipped a security fix in two years, +1 | ✓ | Pirate 5.9.3, Jun 2025: DoS security patch and fix for CVE-2024-52911; 6.0.14, Oct 2026: fixed the two validation flaws behind the 14 Oct 2026 counterfeit-ARRR exploit (with rollback). |
| Shipped a privacy improvement in two years, +1 | ✓ | Ironwood hard fork (6.0.x), activated 3 Oct 2026: new Halo 2-based shielded address type, funds movable from Sapling. |
| Negative | ||
| Unfixed vulnerability, disclosed 2024-07-03, −1 | ✗ | CVE-2024-52914: crafted orphan transactions can stall the node for hours in the uninterruptible orphan-resolution loop; still in Pirate Chain v6.0.14-b14db80. |
| Unfixed vulnerability, disclosed 2024-07-03, −1 | ✗ | CVE-2020-14198: misbehaving peers are auto-banned into an unbounded ban list, so many attacker addresses can exhaust CPU and memory; still in Pirate Chain v6.0.14-b14db80. |
| Unfixed vulnerability, disclosed 2024-09-18, −1 | ✗ | CVE-2019-25220: a long low-difficulty header chain can exhaust memory because the node has no headers pre-synchronisation; still in Pirate Chain v6.0.14-b14db80. |
| Exploit of the chain, 2026-10-14, −1 | ✗ | Two validation flaws in the new Ironwood upgrade let an attacker mint about 39.8M unbacked ARRR (about 20% of supply); mandatory releases up to 6.0.14 reject the exploit block and return the chain to block 4,176,944. |
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.
196,213,798 ARRR 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.
Pirate Chain is secured by 1.20 MH/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.
Pirate Chain is #99 among cryptocurrencies and #578 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 479 places between Pirate Chain'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).