Ycash (y.cash) ranks #173 of 504 cryptocurrencies. On a list that also counts tokens, memecoins, wrapped coins, staked derivatives and stablecoins it appears at #1228: 1055 of the 1227 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 1449 non-native assets CoinSpectrum lists above it by market cap, about 72% are tokens, 21% are claims on other assets and 7% are memecoins.
| CoinSpectrum Grade | A · 74/100 · provisional |
|---|---|
| Rank among cryptocurrencies | #173 |
| Rank counting claims | #1228 |
| Market capitalisation | $5M |
| Price | $0.2967 |
| Circulating supply | 17,002,761 YEC |
| Maximum supply | 21,000,000 YEC |
| Consensus family | Proof of Work |
| Consensus mechanism | Equihash (200,9) |
| Own hashrate | — |
| 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.
A — 74 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 67 to 77 (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) | 7.4 | group average, 11 of 13 measured |
| Sound Money Qualities (6 checks) | 8.3 | 5 of 6 points source |
| Scarcity: a fixed cap that holds, and a supply near 21 million | 10 | fixed maximum supply of 21 million: supply scale 10, cap 10 |
| Durability: five years or more with no halt, freeze or reversal | ✓ | 10 full years since genesis, 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 $3.0e-9 |
| Portability: fees of a cent or less and capacity for real demand | ✗ | typical fee $0.000004; about 107 transactions a second (4.8 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) | 8 | 4 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) | ✗ | zcashd-derived node relays over clearnet by default; Tor needs user setup. |
| Hidden amounts (confidential transactions, RingCT, shielded pools, Mimblewimble) | ✓ | Sapling shielded transactions (inherited from Zcash at the 2019 fork) hide amounts. |
| Hidden sender and receiver (ring signatures or zero-knowledge proofs, one-time or stealth addresses) | ✓ | Sapling zk-SNARK spends hide the sender and shielded addresses the receiver. |
| Scalability (fees, throughput, block time, block space, features) | 8.1 | average of 5 parts source |
| Fees ($0.001 or less 10, $1 or more 0) | 10 | typical fee $0.000004 |
| Throughput (2,478 a second, the busiest network's peak day, 10; 119, the median of the ten busiest, 5) | 4.8 | about 107 simple transactions a second |
| Block time (10 minutes 10, less either side) | 6.8 | a block every 1.3 minutes |
| Block space per 10 minutes (32 MB or more 10) | 8.8 | 2 MB limit, 15.8 MB per 10 minutes |
| Features (3 checks) | 10 | 3 of 3 passed |
| Payments safe to accept within seconds | ✓ | Zcash-derived node keeps first-seen mempool policy with replacement disabled ('Disable replacement feature for now' in src/main.cpp), so conflicting spends are not relayed; blocks are 75 s. |
| Pruned nodes: a full node can validate and drop old history | ✓ | ycashd v4.5.0 keeps the inherited -prune option (deletes old blocks; disables the wallet). |
| Light clients verify payments from headers or proofs, without a trusted server | ✓ | zcashd-derived node serves BIP37 bloom-filtered merkleblocks, so transparent payments can be checked by SPV against headers. |
| Security (miner pay and 7 checks) | 4.5 | 4 of 8 points, 1 not yet measured source |
| Miners paid a day ($1,000 0, $10 million or more 10), 2 points | 0 | about $534 a day |
| Its own hashrate: at least half its algorithm's largest, not merge-mined | – | |
| Largest pool or validator under 50% | ✓ | 23.8% |
| Largest three under 75% | ✓ | 66.9% |
| More than one maintained client | ✗ | 1 |
| Node software is open source | ✓ | The Ycash Foundation (Delaware nonprofit founded by Howard Loo) maintains ycashd, the wallets and the zebra fork in its GitHub organisation; licence is MIT (COPYING). |
| Real on-chain use: 1,000+ transactions a day | ✗ | about 267 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 | Zcash-derived transparent Script with spending conditions only. |
| Multisig and time locks | ✓ | OP_CHECKMULTISIG and OP_CHECKLOCKTIMEVERIFY in its script interpreter (no OP_CHECKSEQUENCEVERIFY). |
| Atomic swaps with other chains | ✓ | Transparent P2SH scripts can express HTLCs (hash check plus CLTV refund). |
| 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. |
| Non-fungible tokens | ✗ | No token or NFT type in the protocol. |
| Decentralisation | 8.2 | section average, 6 of 8 measured |
| Censorship resistant (Source) | 10 | No authority can halt the chain or freeze funds: No protocol-level freeze, blacklist or halt key; consensus is plain Equihash proof of work. source |
| No central team (Source) | 0 | A central team directs it: The Ycash Foundation (Delaware nonprofit founded by Howard Loo) maintains ycashd, the wallets and the zebra fork in its GitHub organisation; licence is MIT (COPYING). 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 | 0% of today's supply allocated at launch to founders, a company, a foundation or investors. No genesis allocation, sale or instamine, in either Zcash's history or the Ycash fork. The inherited Zcash founders' reward and the Ycash Development Fund, previously counted here, are now scored as block-reward cuts. source |
| Fundraising | 10 | No sale of the coin source |
| Developer share (after launch) | 8.9 | Developer share: about 10.8% of today's supply received so far; no share of new block rewards today. Ycash inherits Zcash's history to block 570,000 (18 Jul 2019), including the 20% founders' reward on the first 7.0M coins (1.40M). From the fork, 5% of each block subsidy went to the Ycash Development Fund until consensus stopped enforcing it at nYdfMandateEndHeight 2,275,000 (about Nov 2024): 0.437M. 1.837M / 16.995M (height 3,076,961) = 10.8%. source |
| Supply & Demand | 6.3 | group average |
| Supply & Demand (Source) | 2.6 | average of 5 measures |
| Exchanges (10 or more: 10) | 1 | 1 exchange |
| Daily volume ($10K 0, $1B or more 10) | 0 | $1,980 traded in 24 hours; #3241 by volume on the exchanges the site reads (scored on the median day of the last 2, $1,456) |
| Turnover (volume ÷ market cap, 5% a day: 10) | 0 | 0.03% of its market cap a day, median of the last 3 days |
| 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) | 1.8 | $5.0M, 1.8 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) | 10 | fixed maximum supply of 21 million |
| Record | 6.7 | 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 genesis. Split from Zcash on 18 July 2019 at block 570,000, keeping Zcash's ledger: its history runs from Zcash's launch on 28 October 2016. |
| Development (work, improvements, unfixed issues) | 0 | 2 positive, 4 negative source |
| Positive | ||
| Steady work, 2.5 of 6 | ✓ | 36 commits in 5 of the last 12 months (github.com/ycashfoundation/ycash); ycashd releases in the last 24 months: v4.4.4 (2024-11-05) and v4.5.0 (2026-04-03), two releases; the wallet and light-client repos are more active. |
| Shipped a security fix in two years, +1 | ✓ | ycashd v4.5.0, Apr 2026: fixed the inherited fChecked block-validation cache bug that could skip strict proof verification. |
| 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 Ycash (y.cash) v4.5.0. |
| 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 Ycash (y.cash) v4.5.0. |
| 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 Ycash (y.cash) v4.5.0. |
| Unfixed vulnerability, disclosed 2026-05-05, −1 | ✗ | CVE-2024-52911: a crafted invalid block can make script-check threads read freed precomputed transaction data and crash the node; still in Ycash (y.cash) v4.5.0. |
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.
17,002,761 of a maximum 21,000,000 YEC are in circulation — 81.0% of the total that will ever exist.
| Premine (allocated at launch) | 0% of today's supply |
|---|---|
| Sold by the issuer or insiders | 0% of today's supply |
| Developer share received since launch | 10.8% of today's supply |
| Developer share of new coins today | 0% |
| Fundraising | No sale and no investor round |
No genesis allocation, sale or instamine, in either Zcash's history or the Ycash fork. The inherited Zcash founders' reward and the Ycash Development Fund, previously counted here, are now scored as block-reward cuts.
No sale. Ycash Foundation was set up by Howard Loo, independent of Electric Coin Co. and the Zcash Foundation.
Ycash inherits Zcash's history to block 570,000 (18 Jul 2019), including the 20% founders' reward on the first 7.0M coins (1.40M). From the fork, 5% of each block subsidy went to the Ycash Development Fund until consensus stopped enforcing it at nYdfMandateEndHeight 2,275,000 (about Nov 2024): 0.437M. 1.837M / 16.995M (height 3,076,961) = 10.8%.
The site has no label yet. Figures are derived from Zcash's issuance formula at block 570,000 and the 5% fund rate, not read from the chain. The inherited 1.4M founders' reward belongs to Zcash's original recipients, not Ycash's team. Counting only Ycash's own dev fund gives about 3%. At full 21M supply the design gives 10% non-mined, which matches Forklog's '90% via mining'.
Sources: github.com · github.com · forklog.com · y.cash · coingecko.com. Researched 2026-10-24, high confidence.
No source we can reach publishes a hashrate for Ycash (y.cash).
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.
Ycash (y.cash) is #173 among cryptocurrencies and #1228 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 1055 places between Ycash (y.cash)'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).