ZetaChain (ZETA)

ZetaChain ranks #72 of 508 cryptocurrencies. On a list that also counts tokens, memecoins, wrapped coins, staked derivatives and stablecoins it appears at #377: 305 of the 376 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 387 non-native assets CoinSpectrum lists above it by market cap, about 53% are tokens, 40% are claims on other assets and 7% are memecoins.

CoinSpectrum GradeC · 60/100 · provisional
Rank among cryptocurrencies#72
Rank counting claims#377
Market capitalisation$66M
Price$0.0398
Circulating supply1,655,718,750 ZETA
Maximum supply2,100,000,000 ZETA
Consensus familyProof of Stake
Consensus mechanismTendermint (CometBFT)
Network purposeInteroperability hub
Ledger typeSingle-asset ledger
Launch distributionPresale

Market figures from the 28 October 2026 build. Open the live view for every exchange's price, and charts.

CoinSpectrum Grade (Source)

C — 60 out of 100, provisional (from 16 of 17 criteria, 28 October 2026 build). With what is not yet measured anywhere from nothing to full marks, the score would be 56 to 62 (C to C).

CriterionScoreBasis
Leading Consensus Mechanisms (Source)9.1group average
Consensus: leader ladder9.1Proof of stake: 9.1 of 10 on the ladder of consensus families ranked by their largest chain's market cap
Consensus: family ladder9.1Proof of stake: 9.1 of 10 on the ladder of families ranked by the combined market cap of their chains
Cryptocurrency Standards6.2group average, 5 of 6 measured
Properties (10 whitepaper checks) (Source)44 of 10 passed source
Anyone can mint (permissionless)✗Tendermint (CometBFT)
Limited supply✓fixed maximum of 2,100,000,000
No pre-issuance or developer mint✗
No developer tax✓
No authority that can halt the chain or freeze funds✗Team-held admin policies in the authority module can pause inbound and outbound cross-chain transfers and ZRC-20 withdrawals, which were paused indefinitely in 2026.
No central team✗zeta-chain/node (MIT, copyright Meta Protocol, Inc.) is developed by ZetaChain Labs / Meta Protocol, which sets the roadmap, including the 2026 pivot to AI.
Fees under one cent✓typical fee $0.0000084
Payments safe to accept within seconds✓CometBFT gives deterministic single-block finality with blocks of about 3.8 seconds.
UTXO ledger✗
Privacy built into the protocol✗
Scalability (fees, throughput, block time, block space)7.9average of 4 measures source
Fees ($0.001 or less 10, $1 or more 0)10typical fee $0.0000084
Throughput (1,000 transactions a second or more 10)9.3about 622 simple transactions a second
Block time (10 minutes 10, less either side)2.1a block every 3.83 seconds
Block space per 10 minutes (32 MB or more 10)1022 MB limit, 3450 MB per 10 minutes
Security (9 checks)55 of 9 passed source
Miners paid over $1 million a day✗not mined
Miners paid over $100,000 a day✗
Its own hashrate: at least half its algorithm's largest, not merge-mined✗not mined
Largest pool or validator under 50%✓22%
Largest three under 75%✓42.3%
More than one maintained client✗1
Node software is open source✓zeta-chain/node (MIT, copyright Meta Protocol, Inc.) is developed by ZetaChain Labs / Meta Protocol, which sets the roadmap, including the 2026 pivot to AI.
Real on-chain use: 1,000+ transactions a day✓about 55,500 a day
No 51% attack or deep reorganisation in five years✓
Decentralisation: who can mint (Source)8.6Proof of stake: 8.6 of 10 on the ladder of who produces blocks
Decentralisation: nodes (Source)5.441 reachable nodes source
Decentralisation: holder concentration (Source)—Not yet measured
Capabilities (protocol features)3.32 of 6 passed source
Decentralisation
Network-level privacy: the node hides where a transaction came from (Dandelion++, Tor or I2P, on by default)✗CometBFT gossip relays transactions directly.
Light clients verify payments from headers or proofs, without a trusted server✓CometBFT light client verifies headers from validator signatures.
Scalability
Pruned nodes: a full node can validate and drop old history✓Cosmos SDK pruning strategies plus min-retain-blocks.
Native payment channels or instant payments✗No payment channels.
Security
Hidden amounts (confidential transactions, RingCT, shielded pools, Mimblewimble)✗No confidential transactions.
Hidden sender and receiver (ring signatures or zero-knowledge proofs, one-time or stealth addresses)✗No sender or receiver hiding.
Issuance3.3group average
Premine (allocated at launch)0100% of today's supply allocated at launch to founders, a company, a foundation or investors. The full 2.1B ZETA supply was allocated at launch (Feb 2024) to protocol treasury 24%, core contributors 22.5%, purchasers & advisors 16%, ecosystem growth 12%, user growth 10%, validator incentives 10%, liquidity incentives 5.5%; validator rewards come from the pre-allocated pool, so no coin was minted by open participants. source
Fundraising0Sold by its issuer or insiders: 100% of supply was theirs to sell, 15.9% sold so far. The $27M round (Aug 2023) at $0.081/ZETA bought ~333.3M ZETA, the purchasers part of the 16% purchasers-and-advisors bucket (336M). 333.3M / 2,100,000,000 ZETA total (CoinGecko, 2026-10-24) = 15.9%. $27M round announced Aug 2023 (Blockchain.com, Jane Street, VY Capital, GSR and others); the 16% purchasers bucket is tied to it at $0.081/ZETA. source
Developer share (after launch)10No developer share: every new coin goes to the miners or validators who produce blocks. No cut and no new issuance: the 2.1B ZETA supply is fixed and validator/observer rewards come from the pre-allocated validator-incentives pool via the emissions module. source
Supply & Demand6group average
Supply & Demand (Source)6.2average of 6 measures
Exchanges (10 or more: 10)1035 exchanges
Volume rank among the top 2000$3,284,024 traded in 24 hours; #309 by volume on the exchanges the site reads (ranked on the median day of the last 30, $3,402,688)
Turnover (volume ÷ market cap, 5% a day: 10)9.84.5% of its market cap a day, median of the last 30 days
Order-book depth (bids and asks within 2% ÷ market cap, 1%: 10)10$668,061 within 2% of the price on 8 exchanges, 1.0% of its market cap, median of the last 2 days
Market cap ($1M 0, $10B or more 10)4.5$66M, 4.5 on a scale of 2.5 points per tenfold
Futures exposure (open interest ÷ market cap, less is better)3perpetual open interest 12% of its market cap
Supply (smaller is better)5.7fixed maximum supply of 2.1 billion
Record7group average
Record (origin, claims, halts)92 positive, 3 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, 2024-10-31✗Mainnet stopped producing blocks for about six hours (from 23:53 UTC) after a consensus failure linked to an update run by a few validators.
Halt, freeze or reversal, 2026-04-26✗ZetaChain paused all cross-chain transactions after a ~$334K GatewayEVM exploit of team wallets; the pause lasted well beyond nine hours.
Halt, freeze or reversal, 2026-06-30✗ZetaChain ended cross-chain observation on 10 networks and paused ZRC-20 withdrawals indefinitely as part of its pivot to AI (deposits disabled 2026-06-01).
Age (years since genesis) (Source)22 full years since 2024-02-01, the first day with a recorded price (genesis not yet researched, so the age can only be understated).
Development (work, improvements, unfixed issues)104 positive, 0 negative, 1 not yet researched source
Positive
Steady work, 6 of 6✓371 commits in 12 of the last 12 months (github.com/zeta-chain/node); zetachain node v36.0.6 released 2026-09-03; emergency drain mainnet build 2026-08-26.
Shipped a security fix in two years, +1✓v36.0.6, 3 Sep 2026: public release of a private patch for Cosmos EVM security vulnerabilities.
Shipped a new capability for users in two years, +1✓v38.0.3, Apr 2026: Solana address-lookup-table inbounds, Sui and TON connected-chain support.
Token issuance at protocol level, validated by its own nodes, +2✓ERC-20 contracts on the zEVM, open to any account.
Not yet researched
Shipped a scaling upgrade in two years–

Seventeen criteria, weighted equally. The Cryptocurrency Standards group four parts: properties (ten checks drawn from the Bitcoin whitepaper), scalability (four measures), security (nine checks) and decentralisation (three scales). 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.

Supply

1,655,718,750 of a maximum 2,100,000,000 ZETA are in circulation — 78.8% of the total that will ever exist.

Launch and allocation

Premine (allocated at launch)100% of today's supply
Sold by the issuer or insiders15.9% of today's supply
Developer share received since launch0% of today's supply
Developer share of new coins today0%
Nodes or validators41
FundraisingPrivate or venture funding

The full 2.1B ZETA supply was allocated at launch (Feb 2024) to protocol treasury 24%, core contributors 22.5%, purchasers & advisors 16%, ecosystem growth 12%, user growth 10%, validator incentives 10%, liquidity incentives 5.5%; validator rewards come from the pre-allocated pool, so no coin was minted by open participants.

$27M round announced Aug 2023 (Blockchain.com, Jane Street, VY Capital, GSR and others); the 16% purchasers bucket is tied to it at $0.081/ZETA.

The $27M round (Aug 2023) at $0.081/ZETA bought ~333.3M ZETA, the purchasers part of the 16% purchasers-and-advisors bucket (336M). 333.3M / 2,100,000,000 ZETA total (CoinGecko, 2026-10-24) = 15.9%.

No cut and no new issuance: the 2.1B ZETA supply is fixed and validator/observer rewards come from the pre-allocated validator-incentives pool via the emissions module.

Sources: zetachain.com · coingecko.com · github.com · app.tokenomics.com · blockworks.co · finextra.com. Researched 2026-10-24, medium confidence.

What a regulator has said

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.

How CoinSpectrum ranks ZetaChain

ZetaChain is #72 among cryptocurrencies and #377 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 305 places between ZetaChain'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).

Other Proof of Stake chains

WEMIX WEMIXKAVA KavaBABY BabylonTFUEL Theta FuelAXL AxelarASTR Astar