ZClassic ranks #178 of 504 cryptocurrencies. On a list that also counts tokens, memecoins, wrapped coins, staked derivatives and stablecoins it appears at #1274: 1096 of the 1273 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 1501 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 | A · 76/100 · provisional |
|---|---|
| Rank among cryptocurrencies | #178 |
| Rank counting claims | #1274 |
| Market capitalisation | $5M |
| Price | $0.5001 |
| Circulating supply | 9,287,024 ZCL |
| Maximum supply | 11,462,487 ZCL |
| Consensus family | Proof of Work |
| Consensus mechanism | Equihash (200,9) — Zcash fork |
| 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 — 76 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 72 to 78 (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) | 7.7 | group average, 12 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 | 9.8 | fixed maximum supply of 11.5 million: supply scale 9.5, cap 10 |
| Durability: five years or more with no halt, freeze or reversal | ✓ | 9 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 $5.0e-9 |
| Portability: fees of a cent or less and capacity for real demand | ✗ | typical fee $0.000082; about 53 transactions a second (3.7 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) | ✗ | Bitcoin-derived node relays its own transactions over clearnet by default; Tor (-proxy/-onion) needs user setup and there is no Dandelion. |
| Hidden amounts (confidential transactions, RingCT, shielded pools, Mimblewimble) | ✓ | Sapling shielded transactions, active since block 476,969 (2018), 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) | 7.8 | average of 5 parts source |
| Fees ($0.001 or less 10, $1 or more 0) | 10 | typical fee $0.000082 |
| Throughput (2,478 a second, the busiest network's peak day, 10; 119, the median of the ten busiest, 5) | 3.7 | about 53 simple transactions a second |
| Block time (10 minutes 10, less either side) | 7.8 | a block every 2.5 minutes |
| Block space per 10 minutes (32 MB or more 10) | 7.6 | 2 MB limit, 8 MB per 10 minutes |
| Features (3 checks) | 10 | 3 of 3 passed |
| Payments safe to accept within seconds | ✓ | zclassicd (Zcash fork on a pre-BIP125 Bitcoin base) has transaction replacement disabled, so nodes relay the first-seen spend; blocks alone (75 s) would not qualify. With ~91% of recent blocks paid to one address, that protection rests on a single miner. |
| Pruned nodes: a full node can validate and drop old history | ✓ | zclassic 2.1.1 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 for SPV checks of transparent payments. |
| Security (miner pay and 7 checks) | 2.3 | 2 of 8 points, 1 not yet measured source |
| Miners paid a day ($1,000 0, $10 million or more 10), 2 points | 0 | about $113 a day |
| Its own hashrate: at least half its algorithm's largest, not merge-mined | – | |
| Largest pool or validator under 50% | ✗ | 90.8% |
| Largest three under 75% | ✗ | 100% |
| More than one maintained client | ✗ | 1 |
| Node software is open source | ✓ | zclassicd is maintained by volunteers in the ZclassicCommunity GitHub organisation (MIT licence, CC0 site); no company or foundation controls it. |
| Real on-chain use: 1,000+ transactions a day | ✗ | about 103 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. |
| 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 | 9 | section average, 7 of 8 measured |
| Censorship resistant (Source) | 10 | No authority can halt the chain or freeze funds: No protocol-level party can freeze, blacklist or claw back coins or halt the chain. source |
| No central team (Source) | 10 | No central team: zclassicd is maintained by volunteers in the ZclassicCommunity GitHub organisation (MIT licence, CC0 site); no company or foundation controls it. source |
| Who can mint (Source) | 10 | Proof of work: 10 of 10 on the ladder of who produces blocks |
| Nodes (Source) | 3.2 | 9 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 | 0% of today's supply allocated at launch to founders, a company, a foundation or investors. Zcash fork launched 6 Nov 2016 with the 20% founders' reward removed; no pre-mine, coin sale, ICO or developer tax. source |
| Fundraising | 10 | No sale of the coin source |
| Developer share (after launch) | 10 | No developer share: every new coin goes to the miners or validators who produce blocks. ZClassic forked Zcash (Nov 2016) with the 20% founders' reward removed. The founders'-address list survives in chainparams.cpp, but neither block validation nor the miner enforces it, so the whole subsidy goes to miners. source |
| Supply & Demand | 6 | group average |
| Supply & Demand (Source) | 2.5 | average of 5 measures |
| Exchanges (10 or more: 10) | 1 | 1 exchange |
| Daily volume ($10K 0, $1B or more 10) | 0 | $1,679 traded in 24 hours; #3024 by volume on the exchanges the site reads (scored on the median day of the last 2, $2,821) |
| Turnover (volume ÷ market cap, 5% a day: 10) | 0 | 0.06% of its market cap a day, median of the last 2 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) | 1.7 | $4.6M, 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) | 9.5 | fixed maximum supply of 11.5 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) | 9 | 9 full years since 2016-11-10, the first day with a recorded price (genesis not yet researched, so the age can only be understated). |
| Development (work, improvements, unfixed issues) | 1 | 1 positive, 5 negative source |
| Positive | ||
| Steady work, 6 of 6 | ✓ | 190 commits in 5 of the last 12 months (github.com/ZclassicCommunity/zclassic); zclassicd v2.1.2-beta6, 2026-06-05; releases in the last 24 months also include v2.1.2-beta5 (2026-06-02) and v2.1.1.60 (2024-12-02). An independent C23 node (Z23) is in pre-v1 development with no release yet. |
| 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 ZClassic v2.1.2-beta6. |
| 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 ZClassic v2.1.2-beta6. |
| Unfixed vulnerability, disclosed 2024-07-31, −1 | ✗ | CVE-2024-52919: addr-message spam can overflow the address manager's 32-bit id counter and crash the node, with no addr rate limit; still in ZClassic v2.1.2-beta6. |
| 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 ZClassic v2.1.2-beta6. |
| 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 ZClassic v2.1.2-beta6. |
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.
9,287,024 of a maximum 11,462,487 ZCL 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 | 0% of today's supply |
| Developer share of new coins today | 0% |
| Fundraising | No sale and no investor round |
Zcash fork launched 6 Nov 2016 with the 20% founders' reward removed; no pre-mine, coin sale, ICO or developer tax.
No sale or venture round.
ZClassic forked Zcash (Nov 2016) with the 20% founders' reward removed. The founders'-address list survives in chainparams.cpp, but neither block validation nor the miner enforces it, so the whole subsidy goes to miners.
Sources are thin; the claim rests on the project's description repeated by Coinbase and on the known design (Zcash code without the founders' reward).
Sources: github.com · github.com · coinbase.com · github.com. Researched 2026-10-24, high confidence.
No source we can reach publishes a hashrate for ZClassic.
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.
ZClassic is #178 among cryptocurrencies and #1274 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 1096 places between ZClassic'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).