Avalanche (AVAX)
Avalanche ranks #16 of 484 cryptocurrencies. On a list that also counts tokens, memecoins, wrapped coins, staked derivatives and stablecoins it appears at #26: 10 of the 25 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 17 non-native assets CoinSpectrum lists above it by market cap, 13 are claims on other assets and 4 are tokens.
| CoinSpectrum Grade | A · 74/100 · provisional, A to A+ |
|---|---|
| Rank among cryptocurrencies | #16 |
| Rank counting claims | #26 |
| Market capitalisation | $3.7B |
| Price | $8.27 |
| Circulating supply | 445,845,913 AVAX |
| Maximum supply | 720,000,000 AVAX |
| Consensus family | Proof of Stake |
| Consensus mechanism | Avalanche (Snow family) |
| Active addresses a day | 31,662 October 2026 median, Coin Metrics |
| Network purpose | Smart-contract platform |
| Ledger type | Multi-asset ledger |
| Launch distribution | Presale |
| Regulatory class | Commodity |
Market figures from the 10 November 2026 build. Open the live view for every exchange's price, and charts.
CoinSpectrum Grade (Source)
A — 74 out of 100, provisional (from 10 of 10 sections, 10 November 2026 build). With what is not yet measured anywhere from nothing to full marks, the score would be 71 to 76 (A to A+).
| Section and criteria | Score | Basis |
|---|---|---|
| Consensus | 9.1 | average of 2 criteria |
| By leader (its largest chain's market cap) (Source) | 9.1 | Proof of stake: 9.1 of 10 on the ladder of consensus families ranked by their largest chain's market cap |
| By family (all its chains' market cap) (Source) | 9.1 | Proof of stake: 9.1 of 10 on the ladder of families ranked by the combined market cap of their chains |
| Supply | 8.7 | the supply scale times 0.9, and a point for a fixed cap that holds |
| Supply (21 million scores 10) | 8.5 | fixed maximum supply of 720 million |
| Distribution | 6.7 | average of 4 parts |
| Holder concentration (Source) | – | Not yet measured |
| Active addresses | 6.8 | 31,662 addresses active a day, the median of October 2026's 31 days (Coin Metrics community data) source |
| Premine (allocated at launch) | 2.3 | 76.5% of today's supply allocated at launch to founders, a company, a foundation or investors. 360M AVAX minted and allocated at genesis (sales, team, foundation, partners, airdrop, testnet incentives) against a current total supply of about 470.58M AVAX (CoinGecko, 2026-10-23; staking mints less burned fees). source |
| Fundraising (share sold) (Source) | 7.6 | Sold by its issuer or insiders: 24.4% of supply sold. Seed sale 2.5% (18M at $0.33), private sale 3.46% (24.9M at $0.50, June 2020) and public sale options A1/A2/B 9.97% (71.8M, July 2020) of the 720M cap = ~114.7M AVAX sold. 114.7M / ~470.58M total supply (CoinGecko, 2026-10-23) = 24.4%. $6M from venture firms including a16z (2018), a $12M private token sale (June 2020), and a $42M public sale on 15 July 2020 that sold all 72M AVAX offered (10% of the 720M cap) in about 4.5 hours. Total $60M per The Block. source |
| Developer share (after launch) | 10 | No developer share: every new coin goes to the miners or validators who produce blocks. New AVAX is minted only as staking rewards paid to validators and their delegators from the capped reward schedule; transaction fees are burned. There is no foundation or treasury share of issuance. source |
| Decentralisation | 6.6 | average of 4 parts |
| Governance (Source) | 10 | No authority can halt the chain or freeze funds: No protocol-level party can freeze AVAX or halt the primary network. source |
| No central team (Source) | 0 | A central team directs it: AvalancheGo, the only node implementation, is developed in Ava Labs' repository. source |
| Who can mint (Source) | 7 | Gated by stake: any holder with enough stake can validate: access bought with coins |
| Nodes (Source) | 9.3 | 610 active validators or block producers (source: Current) |
| Security | 8.4 | 6.7 of 8 points source |
| Pool diversity (Largest pool 50% 0 to 20% 10, largest three 90% 0 to 50% 10; 2 points) | 10 | largest 1.42%, largest three 4.26% |
| Network activity (Transactions a day, 250 0, 500,000 or more 10; 2 points) | 9.4 | about 310,902 transactions a day |
| Hashrate (Own work 5, its power 1 kW 0 to 10 GW 5; 1 point) | 1 | not mined: another consensus, 1 |
| Clients (Separate code and teams 10, separate code or teams 9, a fork by the same team or a stale second 8; one client: a new version within 12 months 7, 24 months 6, none in 24 months 5, none in 48 months 3; a second in development +0.5, a second seen running +1, 8 at most with one client; chain ended 0; 1 point) | 7 | one client, latest version Oct 2026 |
| Open source (Node software) | ✓ | |
| No 51% attack (Nor a deep reorganisation, five years) | ✓ | |
| Scalability | 5.8 | average of 5 parts source |
| Fees ($0.001 or less 10, $1 or more 0) | 10 | typical fee $0.0005 |
| Throughput (2,478 a second, the busiest network's peak day, 10; 121, the median of the ten busiest, 5) | 4.8 | about 105 simple transactions a second |
| Block time (10 minutes 10, less either side) | 1.1 | a block every 2 seconds |
| Block space per 10 minutes (24 MB or more 10: the ten busiest networks' median demand, 16.4 MB, and half again for growth) | 10 | 1.84 MB limit, 551 MB per 10 minutes |
| Features (3 checks) | 3.3 | 1 of 3 passed |
| Fast payments (Safe to accept within seconds · Whitepaper abstract, §1, §2 and §11) | ✓ | Snowman consensus finalises C-Chain blocks irreversibly in about one second. |
| Pruned nodes (Old history dropped, every rule checked · Whitepaper §7) | ✗ | AvalancheGo prunes state only (pruning-enabled) and state sync skips old history at bootstrap, but no option deletes old blocks, which running nodes keep. |
| Light clients (Payments verified from headers · Whitepaper §8) | ✗ | No light-client protocol for the Primary Network; wallets trust RPC servers. |
| Privacy | 3.5 | 3.5 of 10: whitepaper privacy 3.5 of 7, extra features 0 of 3, 1 not yet researched source |
| Protocol level privacy (Keys not tied to an identity · Whitepaper §10) | 10 | Any secp256k1 key can hold and send AVAX; the chain's account and transfer rules carry no identity check. |
| UTXO ledger (Separate outputs, change to a new address · Whitepaper §2, §9) | 0 | An account ledger: one running balance for each address, so the remainder stays at the sending address and its payments share one public history. |
| HD addresses (A new address for each payment, unlinked · Whitepaper §10) | – | |
| Hidden amounts (Amounts confidential) | 0 | No confidential transactions on the Primary Network. |
| Hidden parties (Sender and receiver hidden) | 0 | No sender or receiver hiding. |
| Network privacy (Origin hidden by default) | 0 | AvalancheGo gossips transactions directly; no Dandelion or built-in Tor. |
| Programmability | 10 | 9 of 9 points source |
| Token issuance (At protocol level) | 2 | ERC-20 contracts on the C-Chain's EVM, part of the Primary Network that every validator runs, open to any account. |
| Smart contracts (General-purpose) | 2 | The C-Chain, part of the Primary Network every validator runs, is an EVM open to any account, with DEXs and lending on mainnet. |
| Multisig and time locks (Without a third party) | ✓ | Multisig and timelock contracts on the C-Chain EVM. |
| Atomic swaps (With other chains) | ✓ | EVM HTLC contracts (hash lock plus timelock refund) on the C-Chain. |
| Native DEX (Trades the coin itself, not a claim) | ✓ | Traded as itself, not as a wrapped token or a claim: THORChain; Komodo DeFi; its own chain's DEXes (Avalanche, DefiLlama). |
| Cross-chain messaging (Verified by the chain itself) | ✓ | Avalanche Interchain Messaging (Warp): source-chain validators BLS-sign messages, and the destination chain verifies them against stake weights read from the P-Chain (default 67% quorum, C-Chain included). |
| NFTs (Carried by the chain's rules) | ✓ | ERC-721 contracts on the C-Chain EVM. |
| Demand | 7.3 | average of 7 measures |
| Exchanges (10 or more: 10) | 10 | 43 exchanges |
| Daily volume ($10K 0, $1B or more 10) | 7.9 | $139,952,521 traded in 24 hours; #30 by volume on the exchanges the site reads (scored on the median day of the last 30, $84,447,683) |
| Turnover (volume ÷ market cap, 5% a day: 10) | 8 | 2.1% of its market cap a day, median of the last 30 days |
| Order-book depth (±2% of the price ÷ market cap, 1%: 10) | 7.8 | $7,953,040 within 2% of the price on 9 exchanges, 0.22% of its market cap, median of the last 15 days; a lower bound: the books returned by 1 of them stop short of 2% |
| Market cap ($1M 0, $10B or more 10) | 8.9 | $3.7B, 8.9 on a scale of 2.5 points per tenfold |
| Paper trading (futures, options and margin ÷ market cap, 0%: 10, 100%: 0) | 7.2 | futures, options and margin positions 8.0% of its market cap |
| Wallet support (wallets that hold it, 10 or more: 10) | 1 | 1 wallet in the site's wallet directory |
| Record | 7.7 | average of 3 criteria |
| Age (years since genesis) (Source) | 6 | 6 full years since 2020-09-22, the first day with a recorded price (genesis not yet researched, so the age can only be understated). |
| Development (work, fixes, vulnerabilities) | 8 | 3 positive, 0 negative, 1 not yet researched source |
| Positive | ||
| Steady work, 6 of 6 | ✓ | 6,832 commits in 12 of the last 12 months (github.com/ava-labs/avalanchego); AvalancheGo v1.15.2, released 2026-10-22. |
| Shipped a scaling upgrade in two years, +1 | ✓ | Octane, Apr 2025: ACP-176 dynamic gas target and lower fees; Granite, 19 Nov 2025: ACP-226 dynamic minimum block times. |
| Shipped a new capability for users in two years, +1 | ✓ | Etna, 16 Dec 2024: ACP-77 sovereign L1 validators; Granite, Nov 2025: ACP-204 secp256r1 (passkey) precompile. |
| Not yet researched | ||
| Shipped a security fix in two years | – | |
| Conduct (origin, claims, halts) | 9 | 2 positive, 1 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, 2024-02-23 | ✗ | The Primary Network (P-, X- and C-Chain) stopped finalizing blocks for about six hours (first status post 11:30 UTC) because of a gossip-handling bug; it resumed after validators upgraded to AvalancheGo v1.11.1. status.avax.network theblock.co |
Ten sections, weighted equally, each 0 to 10: consensus (the two ladders), supply (the supply scale and a fixed cap that holds), distribution (premine, fundraising, developer share, holders), decentralisation (governance, no central team, who can mint, nodes), security, scalability, privacy, programmability (what the scripting layer can do beyond the whitepaper's payment system), demand, and record (age, development, conduct). They are built from the criteria in the second table: privacy, scalability, security and decentralisation are the Cryptocurrency Standards among them, as follows: privacy (the whitepaper's three checks a base of 7 of 10, three extra features up to 3 more), scalability (four measures and three features), security (pool diversity, network activity, hashrate, clients and two checks) and decentralisation (governance, no central team, who can mint, nodes, holders, premine, fundraising and developer share); programmability (token issuance, smart contracts and five checks) follows them, and supply and demand are two: the supply, scored against 21 million, and demand, the average of seven measures of the market and the wallets. Provisional: parts 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.
Proof of Stake coins
Ethereum ETHA+
BNB BNBA
Solana SOLA+
Cardano ADAA
NEAR Protocol NEARA
Sui SUIA
Gram (prev. Toncoin) GRAMAAll Proof of Stake chains →Proof of Work coins
Bitcoin BTCA+
Zcash ZECA+
Dogecoin DOGEA+
Monero XMRA+
Bitcoin Cash BCHA++
Litecoin LTCA+
Ethereum Classic ETCAAll Proof of Work chains →Supply
445,845,913 of a maximum 720,000,000 AVAX are in circulation — 61.9% of the total that will ever exist.
Launch and allocation
| Premine (allocated at launch) | 76.5% of today's supply |
|---|---|
| Sold by the issuer or insiders | 24.4% of today's supply |
| Developer share received since launch | 0% of today's supply |
| Developer share of new coins today | 0% |
| Nodes or validators | 610 |
| Fundraising | Private or venture funding |
360M AVAX minted and allocated at genesis (sales, team, foundation, partners, airdrop, testnet incentives) against a current total supply of about 470.58M AVAX (CoinGecko, 2026-10-23; staking mints less burned fees).
$6M from venture firms including a16z (2018), a $12M private token sale (June 2020), and a $42M public sale on 15 July 2020 that sold all 72M AVAX offered (10% of the 720M cap) in about 4.5 hours. Total $60M per The Block.
Seed sale 2.5% (18M at $0.33), private sale 3.46% (24.9M at $0.50, June 2020) and public sale options A1/A2/B 9.97% (71.8M, July 2020) of the 720M cap = ~114.7M AVAX sold. 114.7M / ~470.58M total supply (CoinGecko, 2026-10-23) = 24.4%.
New AVAX is minted only as staking rewards paid to validators and their delegators from the capped reward schedule; transaction fees are burned. There is no foundation or treasury share of issuance.
Sources: docs.avascan.info · theblock.co · app.tokenomics.com · build.avax.network · docs.avax.network · theblock.co. Researched 2026-10-24, high confidence.
What a regulator has said
Named a digital commodity in the joint SEC-CFTC interpretation (Mar 17, 2026).
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 Avalanche
Avalanche is #16 among cryptocurrencies and #26 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 10 places between Avalanche'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).
See the 5 wrapped and staked claims on Avalanche →