Waves ranks #122 of 504 cryptocurrencies. On a list that also counts tokens, memecoins, wrapped coins, staked derivatives and stablecoins it appears at #795: 673 of the 794 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 797 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 | B · 69/100 · provisional |
|---|---|
| Rank among cryptocurrencies | #122 |
| Rank counting claims | #795 |
| Market capitalisation | $23M |
| Price | $0.2325 |
| Circulating supply | 100,000,000 WAVES |
| Maximum supply | no fixed cap |
| Consensus family | Proof of Stake |
| Consensus mechanism | LPoS (Waves-NG) |
| Network purpose | Smart-contract platform |
| 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 — 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 60 to 72 (C to B).
| Criterion | Score | Basis |
|---|---|---|
| Leading Consensus Mechanisms (Source) | 9.1 | group average |
| Consensus: leader ladder | 9.1 | Proof of stake: 9.1 of 10 on the ladder of consensus families ranked by their largest chain's market cap |
| Consensus: family ladder | 9.1 | Proof of stake: 9.1 of 10 on the ladder of families ranked by the combined market cap of their chains |
| Cryptocurrency Standards (Source) | 5.7 | group average, 11 of 13 measured |
| Sound Money Qualities (6 checks) | 8.8 | 3.5 of 4 points, 2 not yet measured source |
| Scarcity: a fixed cap that holds, and a supply near 21 million | 4.6 | no fixed maximum; 100 million in circulation: supply scale 9.1, cap 0 |
| Durability: five years or more with no halt, freeze or reversal | ✓ | 10 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 $2.3e-9 |
| Portability: fees of a cent or less and capacity for real demand | – | typical fee $0.00024 |
| Verifiability: open-source nodes and checking without a trusted server | – | node software open source |
| Privacy (5 checks) | 2 | 1 of 5 passed source |
| Whitepaper privacy: keys are not tied to an identity | ✓ | Anyone can create keys and receive and send coins; the protocol carries 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) | ✗ | Waves nodes relay transactions directly; no Dandelion or built-in Tor. |
| Hidden amounts (confidential transactions, RingCT, shielded pools, Mimblewimble) | ✗ | Transfers 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) | 5.5 | average of 3 parts source |
| Fees ($0.001 or less 10, $1 or more 0) | 10 | typical fee $0.00024 |
| Throughput (2,478 a second, the busiest network's peak day, 10; 119, the median of the ten busiest, 5) | – | not yet measured |
| Block time (10 minutes 10, less either side) | 6.4 | a block every 59.4 seconds |
| Block space per 10 minutes (32 MB or more 10) | – | not yet measured |
| Features (3 checks) | 0 | 0 of 2 passed, 1 not yet researched |
| Payments safe to accept within seconds | ✗ | Waves-NG microblocks include transactions within seconds, but key blocks are about a minute apart and finality is probabilistic. |
| Pruned nodes: a full node can validate and drop old history | – | Node pruning not established. |
| Light clients verify payments from headers or proofs, without a trusted server | ✗ | No light-client protocol with header proofs; wallets use node REST APIs. |
| Security (miner pay and 7 checks) | 5 | 5 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% | ✓ | 19.7% |
| Largest three under 75% | ✓ | 40.7% |
| More than one maintained client | ✗ | 1 |
| Node software is open source | ✓ | The Scala node and the Go node (gowaves), both MIT, are developed in the wavesplatform organisation by the Waves core team, which sets the roadmap. |
| Real on-chain use: 1,000+ transactions a day | ✓ | about 18,200 a day |
| No 51% attack or deep reorganisation in five years | ✓ | |
| Programmability (tokens, contracts, 5 checks) | 7.8 | 7 of 9 points source |
| Token issuance at protocol level, validated by its own nodes | 2 | Native asset issuance (Issue transaction, 1 WAVES fee) plus Ride smart contracts, open to any account. |
| Smart contracts: a general-purpose contract system | 2 | Ride dApp and account scripts open to any account since 2019. |
| Multisig and time locks | ✓ | Ride account scripts express m-of-n signature checks and height conditions. |
| Atomic swaps with other chains | ✓ | Ride scripts can express hash- and height-locked spends. |
| An exchange built into the protocol | ✗ | The Exchange transaction settles signed orders on chain, but matching is done by a separate matcher service (WX Network), not by the ledger. |
| Cross-chain messaging the chain verifies itself | ✗ | No protocol-level cross-chain messaging; bridges are third-party. |
| Non-fungible tokens | ✓ | Native NFTs: tokens issued with quantity 1, decimals 0 and not reissuable, for a 0.001 WAVES fee. |
| Decentralisation | 5.6 | section average, 6 of 8 measured |
| Censorship resistant (Source) | 10 | No authority can halt the chain or freeze funds: Issued assets can be scripted, but no party can freeze or claw back native WAVES. source |
| No central team (Source) | 0 | A central team directs it: The Scala node and the Go node (gowaves), both MIT, are developed in the wavesplatform organisation by the Waves core team, which sets the roadmap. source |
| Who can mint (Source) | 8.6 | Proof of stake: 8.6 of 10 on the ladder of who produces blocks |
| Nodes (Source) | — | Not yet counted |
| Holder concentration (Source) | — | Not yet measured |
| Premine (allocated at launch) | 2.8 | 72.2% of today's supply allocated at launch to founders, a company, a foundation or investors. 100M WAVES were created at the 2016 genesis (85% ICO buyers, 9% developers/company, 4% partners and supporters, 1% early supporters, 1% bounty), against 138,504,760 WAVES total today after block rewards (Waves node /blockchain/rewards at height 5,457,459, 2026-10-23). source |
| Fundraising | 2.8 | Sold by its issuer or insiders: 72.2% of supply was theirs to sell, 61.4% sold so far. The April-June 2016 ICO sold 85% of the 100M genesis supply (85M WAVES) for ~30,000 BTC; the partner, supporter, developer and bounty allocations are not counted. 85M / 138,504,760 WAVES total (Waves node, 2026-10-23) = 61.4%. Public ICO April-June 2016 raised ~30,000 BTC (~$16M); the 4% to partners/supporters and 1% to early supporters were allocated on undisclosed terms. source |
| Developer share (after launch) | 9.4 | Developer share: about 6.4% of today's supply received so far; 33.3% of each new block reward goes to them today. Since features 19/20 (blocks 3,720,000 and 3,750,000, 2022), 2 WAVES of the 6-WAVES reward go to the Waves DAO treasury contract (3PEgG7eZ…) and 2 to the XTN buy-back contract, leaving 2 to the block generator (×10 during the Boost, blocks 5,110,000-5,409,999). DAO: 1,738,572 blocks × 2 + 300,000 × 18 extra = 8.88M WAVES = 6.4% of 138.51M (node API, height 5,458,572). Not counted: the buy-back share, another 33.3% now and 8.88M so far, which buys and burns Neutrino's XTN. Counting it gives 66.7% and 12.8%. Feature 21 ('Cease XTN buy-back') is still in voting. source |
| Supply & Demand | 7.8 | group average |
| Supply & Demand (Source) | 6.4 | average of 6 measures |
| Exchanges (10 or more: 10) | 8 | 8 exchanges |
| Daily volume ($10K 0, $1B or more 10) | 5.1 | $3,722,639 traded in 24 hours; #314 by volume on the exchanges the site reads (scored on the median day of the last 30, $3,426,930) |
| Turnover (volume ÷ market cap, 5% a day: 10) | 7.7 | 14% of its market cap a day, median of the last 30 days |
| Order-book depth (bids and asks within 2% ÷ market cap, 1%: 10) | 6.3 | $17,467 within 2% of the price on 4 exchanges, 0.08% of its market cap, median of the last 2 days |
| Market cap ($1M 0, $10B or more 10) | 3.4 | $23M, 3.4 on a scale of 2.5 points per tenfold |
| Paper trading (futures, options and margin ÷ market cap, 0%: 10, 100%: 0) | 8.1 | futures, options and margin positions 3.5% of its market cap |
| Supply (smaller is better) | 9.1 | no fixed maximum; 100 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 | 10 full years since 2016-06-02, 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 | ✓ | 276 commits in 10 of the last 12 months (github.com/wavesplatform/Waves); Waves node 1.6.4 released 2026-08-27. |
| Shipped a security fix in two years, +1 | ✓ | Node 1.5.10, Apr 2025: feature #24 'ecrecover fix' (activated at height 4,700,000) corrects public-key recovery; 1.5.11 (Aug 2025) fixed an important P2P protocol issue. |
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.
100,000,000 WAVES are in circulation, against no fixed cap — issuance has no defined end.
| Premine (allocated at launch) | 72.2% of today's supply |
|---|---|
| Sold by the issuer or insiders | 61.4% of today's supply |
| Developer share received since launch | 6.4% of today's supply |
| Developer share of new coins today | 33.3% |
| Fundraising | Public sale |
100M WAVES were created at the 2016 genesis (85% ICO buyers, 9% developers/company, 4% partners and supporters, 1% early supporters, 1% bounty), against 138,504,760 WAVES total today after block rewards (Waves node /blockchain/rewards at height 5,457,459, 2026-10-23).
Public ICO April-June 2016 raised ~30,000 BTC (~$16M); the 4% to partners/supporters and 1% to early supporters were allocated on undisclosed terms.
The April-June 2016 ICO sold 85% of the 100M genesis supply (85M WAVES) for ~30,000 BTC; the partner, supporter, developer and bounty allocations are not counted. 85M / 138,504,760 WAVES total (Waves node, 2026-10-23) = 61.4%.
Since features 19/20 (blocks 3,720,000 and 3,750,000, 2022), 2 WAVES of the 6-WAVES reward go to the Waves DAO treasury contract (3PEgG7eZ…) and 2 to the XTN buy-back contract, leaving 2 to the block generator (×10 during the Boost, blocks 5,110,000-5,409,999). DAO: 1,738,572 blocks × 2 + 300,000 × 18 extra = 8.88M WAVES = 6.4% of 138.51M (node API, height 5,458,572). Not counted: the buy-back share, another 33.3% now and 8.88M so far, which buys and burns Neutrino's XTN. Counting it gives 66.7% and 12.8%. Feature 21 ('Cease XTN buy-back') is still in voting.
Sources: docs.waves.tech · icodrops.com · docs.waves.tech · nodes.wavesnodes.com · coinmarketcap.com · cryptobriefing.com. Researched 2026-10-24, high 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.
Waves is #122 among cryptocurrencies and #795 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 673 places between Waves'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).