Zilliqa ranks #96 of 508 cryptocurrencies. On a list that also counts tokens, memecoins, wrapped coins, staked derivatives and stablecoins it appears at #561: 465 of the 560 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 562 non-native assets CoinSpectrum lists above it by market cap, about 59% are tokens, 33% are claims on other assets and 9% are memecoins.
| CoinSpectrum Grade | B · 65/100 · provisional |
|---|---|
| Rank among cryptocurrencies | #96 |
| Rank counting claims | #561 |
| Market capitalisation | $39M |
| Price | $0.00200 |
| Circulating supply | 19,513,551,525 ZIL |
| Maximum supply | 21,000,000,000 ZIL |
| Consensus family | Proof of Stake |
| Consensus mechanism | PoS (Zilliqa 2.0, HotStuff BFT) |
| 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 — 65 out of 100, provisional (from 15 of 17 criteria, 28 October 2026 build). With what is not yet measured anywhere from nothing to full marks, the score would be 57 to 70 (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 | 6.3 | group average, 4 of 6 measured |
| Properties (10 whitepaper checks) (Source) | 6 | 6 of 10 passed source |
| Anyone can mint (permissionless) | ✓ | PoS (Zilliqa 2.0, HotStuff BFT) |
| Limited supply | ✓ | fixed maximum of 21,000,000,000 |
| No pre-issuance or developer mint | ✗ | |
| No developer tax | ✓ | |
| No authority that can halt the chain or freeze funds | ✓ | No protocol-level freeze of user ZIL; past halts were bugs, not a designed power. |
| No central team | ✗ | Zilliqa Research develops zq2, the only client. |
| Fees under one cent | ✓ | typical fee $0.0002 |
| Payments safe to accept within seconds | ✓ | Zilliqa 2.0 uses a HotStuff-style PoS BFT with about 1-second blocks and deterministic finality within seconds. |
| UTXO ledger | ✗ | |
| Privacy built into the protocol | ✗ | |
| Scalability (fees, throughput, block time, block space) | 6.7 | average of 3 measures source |
| Fees ($0.001 or less 10, $1 or more 0) | 10 | typical fee $0.0002 |
| Throughput (1,000 transactions a second or more 10) | 10 | about 2,950 simple transactions a second |
| Block time (10 minutes 10, less either side) | 0.2 | a block every 1.15 seconds |
| Block space per 10 minutes (32 MB or more 10) | – | no fixed byte limit (gas, compute units or mass instead), left out |
| Security (9 checks) | 4 | 4 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% | ✓ | 15.3% |
| Largest three under 75% | ✓ | 44% |
| More than one maintained client | ✗ | 1 |
| Node software is open source | ✓ | Zilliqa Research develops zq2, the only client. |
| Real on-chain use: 1,000+ transactions a day | ✗ | about 504 a day |
| No 51% attack or deep reorganisation in five years | ✓ | |
| Decentralisation: who can mint (Source) | 8.6 | Proof of stake: 8.6 of 10 on the ladder of who produces blocks |
| Decentralisation: nodes (Source) | — | Not yet counted |
| Decentralisation: holder concentration (Source) | — | Not yet measured |
| Capabilities (protocol features) | 0 | 0 of 6 passed, 1 not yet measured source |
| Decentralisation | ||
| Network-level privacy: the node hides where a transaction came from (Dandelion++, Tor or I2P, on by default) | ✗ | zq2 nodes gossip over libp2p with no Dandelion relay or built-in Tor. |
| Light clients verify payments from headers or proofs, without a trusted server | ✗ | No light-client protocol is documented for Zilliqa 2.0; wallets use RPC endpoints. |
| Scalability | ||
| Pruned nodes: a full node can validate and drop old history | – | Pruning for zq2 nodes was not documented. |
| Native payment channels or instant payments | ✗ | No payment channels; HotStuff finality does not count. |
| Security | ||
| 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) | ✗ | Accounts are public. |
| Issuance | 5.7 | group average |
| Premine (allocated at launch) | 3.5 | 64.6% of today's supply allocated at launch to founders, a company, a foundation or investors. 12.6B ZIL (60% of the 21B cap) existed at the Dec 2017 token generation event (contributors up to 30%, Anquan 10%, Zilliqa Research 12%, team 5%, agencies/advisors 3%), against ~19.51B ZIL circulating/total (CoinGecko). source |
| Fundraising | 3.5 | Sold by its issuer or insiders: 64.6% of supply was theirs to sell, 30.5% sold so far. The Dec 2017-Jan 2018 private and community sales (48,889 ETH cap, ~$22M) delivered the 'contributors' share of up to 30% of the 21B cap = ~6.3B ZIL incl. bonuses (CoinCarp lists 5.73B for the community round alone). 6.3B / 20,623,800,450 ZIL (CoinGecko total, 2026-10-24) = 30.5%. Private early-contributor sale (~$2.23M) and a community sale (~$19.77M) against a 48,889 ETH (~$22M) cap, Dec 2017 - Jan 2018. source |
| Developer share (after launch) | 10 | No developer share: every new coin goes to the miners or validators who produce blocks. Zilliqa 1.0 paid 20% base and 40% cosignature rewards to mining nodes and 40% to the staked seed-node programme (stakers); Zilliqa's own guard nodes were counted but unrewarded. Zilliqa 2.0 (2025) pays 51,000 ZIL per 3,600-block epoch entirely to validators and their delegators. No foundation share. source |
| Supply & Demand | 4.7 | group average |
| Supply & Demand (Source) | 5.7 | average of 6 measures |
| Exchanges (10 or more: 10) | 10 | 38 exchanges |
| Volume rank among the top 200 | 0 | $4,265,419 traded in 24 hours; #335 by volume on the exchanges the site reads (ranked on the median day of the last 30, $3,068,801) |
| Turnover (volume ÷ market cap, 5% a day: 10) | 9.9 | 4.8% of its market cap a day, median of the last 30 days |
| Order-book depth (bids and asks within 2% ÷ market cap, 1%: 10) | 8.4 | $125,166 within 2% of the price on 7 exchanges, 0.32% of its market cap, median of the last 2 days |
| Market cap ($1M 0, $10B or more 10) | 4 | $39M, 4 on a scale of 2.5 points per tenfold |
| Futures exposure (open interest ÷ market cap, less is better) | 2 | perpetual open interest 17% of its market cap |
| Supply (smaller is better) | 3.6 | fixed maximum supply of 21 billion |
| Record | 9 | group average |
| Record (origin, claims, halts) | 9 | 2 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, 2023-12-18 | ✗ | Mainnet block production interrupted for more than half a day; partners told to pause deposits and withdrawals. |
| Halt, freeze or reversal, 2024-05-08 | ✗ | Block generation slowed and transaction processing stopped; disruptions continued until restoration was announced on 10 May. |
| Halt, freeze or reversal, 2024-09-29 | ✗ | A bug stalled block production; the network had not resumed normal operation a day later. |
| Age (years since genesis) (Source) | 8 | 8 full years since 2018-01-25, the first day with a recorded price (genesis not yet researched, so the age can only be understated). |
| Development (work, improvements, unfixed issues) | 10 | 4 positive, 0 negative source |
| Positive | ||
| Steady work, 6 of 6 | ✓ | 552 commits in 12 of the last 12 months (github.com/Zilliqa/zq2); zq2 v0.21.10, 22 Sep 2026; 54 stable releases in the last 24 months. |
| Shipped a security fix in two years, +1 | ✓ | zq2 v0.21.9, Sep 2026: fix for audit finding F-2026-19000; v0.22.0, Oct 2026: rust-sec advisory fixes. |
| Shipped a scaling upgrade in two years, +1 | ✓ | Zilliqa 2.0 mainnet migration, 23 Jun 2025: PoS HotStuff consensus with ~1.4 s blocks replacing Zilliqa 1.0's slow Tx blocks. |
| Token issuance at protocol level, validated by its own nodes, +2 | ✓ | ZRC-2 tokens as Scilla contracts and ERC-20 contracts on its EVM, open to any account. |
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.
19,513,551,525 of a maximum 21,000,000,000 ZIL are in circulation — 92.9% of the total that will ever exist.
| Premine (allocated at launch) | 64.6% of today's supply |
|---|---|
| Sold by the issuer or insiders | 30.5% of today's supply |
| Developer share received since launch | 0% of today's supply |
| Developer share of new coins today | 0% |
| Fundraising | Public sale |
12.6B ZIL (60% of the 21B cap) existed at the Dec 2017 token generation event (contributors up to 30%, Anquan 10%, Zilliqa Research 12%, team 5%, agencies/advisors 3%), against ~19.51B ZIL circulating/total (CoinGecko).
Private early-contributor sale (~$2.23M) and a community sale (~$19.77M) against a 48,889 ETH (~$22M) cap, Dec 2017 - Jan 2018.
The Dec 2017-Jan 2018 private and community sales (48,889 ETH cap, ~$22M) delivered the 'contributors' share of up to 30% of the 21B cap = ~6.3B ZIL incl. bonuses (CoinCarp lists 5.73B for the community round alone). 6.3B / 20,623,800,450 ZIL (CoinGecko total, 2026-10-24) = 30.5%.
Zilliqa 1.0 paid 20% base and 40% cosignature rewards to mining nodes and 40% to the staked seed-node programme (stakers); Zilliqa's own guard nodes were counted but unrewarded. Zilliqa 2.0 (2025) pays 51,000 ZIL per 3,600-block epoch entirely to validators and their delegators. No foundation share.
Sources: blog.zilliqa.com · coincarp.com · coingecko.com · blog.zilliqa.com · unpkg.com · blog.zilliqa.com. Researched 2026-10-24, medium 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.
Zilliqa is #96 among cryptocurrencies and #561 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 465 places between Zilliqa'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).