Firo ranks #131 of 504 cryptocurrencies. On a list that also counts tokens, memecoins, wrapped coins, staked derivatives and stablecoins it appears at #992: 861 of the 991 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 1016 non-native assets CoinSpectrum lists above it by market cap, about 66% are tokens, 24% are claims on other assets and 10% are memecoins.
| CoinSpectrum Grade | A · 78/100 · provisional |
|---|---|
| Rank among cryptocurrencies | #131 |
| Rank counting claims | #992 |
| Market capitalisation | $16M |
| Price | $0.8201 |
| Circulating supply | 19,195,276 FIRO |
| Maximum supply | 21,400,000 FIRO |
| Consensus family | Proof of Work |
| Consensus mechanism | FiroPoW (ProgPoW) |
| Own hashrate | 12 GH/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.
A — 78 out of 100, provisional (from 17 of 20 criteria, 28 October 2026 build). With what is not yet measured anywhere from nothing to full marks, the score would be 65 to 81 (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, 10 of 13 measured |
| Sound Money Qualities (6 checks) | 10 | 5 of 5 points, 1 not yet measured source |
| Scarcity: a fixed cap that holds, and a supply near 21 million | 10 | fixed maximum supply of 21.4 million: supply scale 10, cap 10 |
| Durability: five years or more with no halt, freeze or reversal | ✓ | 8 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 $8.2e-9 |
| Portability: fees of a cent or less and capacity for real 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) | 10 | 5 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) | ✓ | firod and Firo Qt relay transactions with Dandelion++ unless explicitly disabled (implemented 2018–2019, still maintained in v0.14.x). |
| Hidden amounts (confidential transactions, RingCT, shielded pools, Mimblewimble) | ✓ | Spark (activated 2024) shielded transactions hide amounts; open to every user. |
| Hidden sender and receiver (ring signatures or zero-knowledge proofs, one-time or stealth addresses) | ✓ | Spark hides the sender with zero-knowledge spend proofs and the receiver with Spark addresses. |
| Scalability (fees, throughput, block time, block space, features) | — | too few measures yet 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) | – | not yet measured |
| 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) | – | not yet measured |
| Features (3 checks) | 10 | 2 of 2 passed, 1 not yet researched |
| Payments safe to accept within seconds | ✓ | LLMQ-based InstantSend locks transactions within seconds, and ChainLocks protect against reorganisation. |
| Pruned nodes: a full node can validate and drop old history | – | Pruning support was not documented in Firo's releases. |
| Light clients verify payments from headers or proofs, without a trusted server | ✓ | Bitcoin-derived headers with Merkle roots support SPV verification (Bitcoin §8). |
| Security (miner pay and 7 checks) | 3 | 3 of 9 points source |
| Miners paid a day ($1,000 0, $10 million or more 10), 2 points | 0 | about $160 a day |
| Its own hashrate: at least half its algorithm's largest, not merge-mined | ✓ | |
| Largest pool or validator under 50% | ✗ | 84.5% |
| Largest three under 75% | ✗ | 90.5% |
| More than one maintained client | ✗ | 1 |
| Node software is open source | ✓ | The Firo core team, funded by the protocol's development fund, maintains firod (firoorg/firo, MIT). |
| Real on-chain use: 1,000+ transactions a day | ✗ | about 861 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 | Bitcoin-derived Script alongside Spark private transactions; spending conditions only. |
| Multisig and time locks | – | Not established: OP_CHECKMULTISIG works, but mainnet sets BIP65Height to INT_MAX (CLTV only in standardness policy) and CSV depends on an expired 2016-2017 BIP9 window whose activation was not confirmed. |
| Atomic swaps with other chains | ✓ | FIRO is swap-enabled in the Komodo coin list and took part in AtomicDEX testing, though the CLTV refund path is enforced by relay policy rather than consensus. |
| 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 feature is active; Elysium was discontinued and Spark Assets are not activated. |
| Decentralisation | 8 | section average, 6 of 8 measured |
| Censorship resistant (Source) | 10 | No authority can halt the chain or freeze funds: No freeze or admin key over user coins. source |
| No central team (Source) | 0 | A central team directs it: The Firo core team, funded by the protocol's development fund, maintains firod (firoorg/firo, MIT). 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) | 8.1 | Developer share: about 18.6% of today's supply received so far; 25% of each new block reward goes to them today. Founders' reward from launch (28 Sep 2016) to the first halving (block 302,438, Oct 2020): 10 of 50 coins per block (20%) to five founder addresses until Znodes (block 66,700), then 7 of 50 (14%; halved with MTP from Dec 2018). Since then a development fund of 15% (stage 2) plus a community fund of 10% (stage 3, from block 486,221, June 2022) = 25%, kept in the Sep 2024 split (masternodes 70%, miners 5%, dev 15%, community 10%). Arithmetic per chainparams/validation.cpp schedule to block 1,399,896: 666,990 + 356,048 + 647,059 founders + 344,593 + 738,178 + 689,441 funds = ~3.44M of ~18.51M theoretical supply = ~18.6%. source |
| Supply & Demand | 7.2 | group average |
| Supply & Demand (Source) | 4.4 | average of 6 measures |
| Exchanges (10 or more: 10) | 2 | 2 exchanges |
| Daily volume ($10K 0, $1B or more 10) | 1.9 | $68,781 traded in 24 hours; #1656 by volume on the exchanges the site reads (scored on the median day of the last 30, $85,153) |
| Turnover (volume ÷ market cap, 5% a day: 10) | 4.6 | 0.48% of its market cap a day, median of the last 30 days |
| Order-book depth (bids and asks within 2% ÷ market cap, 1%: 10) | 5.1 | $5,208 within 2% of the price on 1 exchange, 0.03% of its market cap, median of the last 2 days |
| Market cap ($1M 0, $10B or more 10) | 3 | $16M, 3 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 21.4 million |
| Record | 8 | 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) | 8 | 8 full years since 2017-11-23, the first day with a recorded price (genesis not yet researched, so the age can only be understated). |
| Development (work, improvements, unfixed issues) | 6 | 3 positive, 2 negative source |
| Positive | ||
| Steady work, 6 of 6 | ✓ | 573 commits in 12 of the last 12 months (github.com/firoorg/firo); firo v0.14.18.2, 16 Oct 2026; 13 stable releases in the last 24 months. |
| Shipped a security fix in two years, +1 | ✓ | Firo v0.14.16.1 (Jun 2026) and v0.14.17.2 (Aug 2026): mandatory security releases for Spark Name overflow and a disclosed Spark spend vulnerability; v0.14.18.0 hard fork (block 1,371,000, Sep 2026) added a versioned Spark spend format. |
| Shipped a new capability for users in two years, +1 | ✓ | Firo v0.14.15.0 (Oct 2025) and v0.14.16.0 (May 2026): transferable, renewable Spark Names (native names) and Spark address message signing (v0.14.15.3, Mar 2026). |
| 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 Firo v0.14.18.2. |
| 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 Firo v0.14.18.2. |
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.
19,195,276 of a maximum 21,400,000 FIRO are in circulation — 89.7% of the total that will ever exist.
| Developer share received since launch | 18.6% of today's supply |
|---|---|
| Developer share of new coins today | 25% |
Founders' reward from launch (28 Sep 2016) to the first halving (block 302,438, Oct 2020): 10 of 50 coins per block (20%) to five founder addresses until Znodes (block 66,700), then 7 of 50 (14%; halved with MTP from Dec 2018). Since then a development fund of 15% (stage 2) plus a community fund of 10% (stage 3, from block 486,221, June 2022) = 25%, kept in the Sep 2024 split (masternodes 70%, miners 5%, dev 15%, community 10%). Arithmetic per chainparams/validation.cpp schedule to block 1,399,896: 666,990 + 356,048 + 647,059 founders + 344,593 + 738,178 + 689,441 funds = ~3.44M of ~18.51M theoretical supply = ~18.6%.
Sources: github.com · github.com · firo.org. Researched 2026-10-24, high confidence.
Firo is secured by 12 GH/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.
Firo is #131 among cryptocurrencies and #992 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 861 places between Firo'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).