Axelar ranks #76 of 504 cryptocurrencies. On a list that also counts tokens, memecoins, wrapped coins, staked derivatives and stablecoins it appears at #402: 326 of the 401 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 410 non-native assets CoinSpectrum lists above it by market cap, about 54% are tokens, 39% are claims on other assets and 8% are memecoins.
| CoinSpectrum Grade | C · 62/100 · provisional, C to B |
|---|---|
| Rank among cryptocurrencies | #76 |
| Rank counting claims | #402 |
| Market capitalisation | $60M |
| Price | $0.0479 |
| Circulating supply | 1,251,584,625 AXL |
| Maximum supply | no fixed cap |
| Consensus family | Proof of Stake |
| Consensus mechanism | Tendermint (CometBFT) |
| Network purpose | Interoperability hub |
| 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.
C — 62 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 59 to 65 (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 (Source) | 5.5 | group average, 11 of 12 measured |
| Sound Money Properties (6 checks) (Source) | 7.3 | 4.4 of 6 points source |
| Scarcity (Limited supply · 1 Store of value · Whitepaper §6) | 3.8 | no fixed maximum; 1.25 billion in circulation: supply scale 7.6, cap 0 |
| Durability (Sustainability · 1 Store of value) | ✗ | 4 full years since its first recorded price, no halt, freeze or reversal in five years |
| Fungibility (Interchangeability · 3 Unit of account) | ✓ | every unit identical and worth any other |
| Portability (Scalability · 2 Medium of exchange) | ✓ | typical fee $0.00005; about 2,260 transactions a second, 9.8 on the throughput scale (5 is the busiest networks' median demand) |
| Divisibility (Flexibility · 3 Unit of account) | ✓ | 6 decimal places, the smallest unit worth $4.8e-8 |
| Verifiability (Authenticity check · 1 Store of value · Whitepaper §8) | ✓ | node software open source; light clients verify from headers or proofs |
| Scalability (fees, throughput, block time, block space, features) | 8.1 | average of 5 parts source |
| Fees ($0.001 or less 10, $1 or more 0) | 10 | typical fee $0.00005 |
| Throughput (2,478 a second, the busiest network's peak day, 10; 119, the median of the ten busiest, 5) | 9.8 | about 2,260 simple transactions a second |
| Block time (10 minutes 10, less either side) | 0.9 | a block every 1.77 seconds |
| Block space per 10 minutes (32 MB or more 10) | 10 | 5.24 MB limit, 1780 MB per 10 minutes |
| Features (3 checks) | 10 | 3 of 3 passed |
| Fast payments (Safe to accept within seconds · Whitepaper §11) | ✓ | CometBFT gives deterministic single-block finality with blocks of about 2 seconds (cross-chain transfers wait on source-chain finality). |
| Pruned nodes (Old history dropped, every rule checked · Whitepaper §7) | ✓ | Cosmos SDK pruning strategies plus min-retain-blocks. |
| Light clients (Payments verified from headers · Whitepaper §8) | ✓ | CometBFT light client verifies headers from validator signatures. |
| Security (miner pay and 7 checks) | 5 | 5 of 9 points source |
| Miner pay (A day, $1,000 0 to $10 million 10; 2 points) | 0 | not mined |
| Own hashrate (Half its algorithm's largest, not merge-mined) | ✗ | not mined |
| Largest pool (Pool or validator under 50%) | ✓ | 13.7% |
| Largest three (Under 75% together) | ✓ | 21.2% |
| Clients (More than one maintained) | ✗ | 1 |
| Open source (Node software) | ✓ | axelar-core (Apache 2.0) is developed by Interop Labs, which employs nearly all core developers. |
| Real use (1,000+ transactions a day) | ✓ | about 31,000 a day |
| No 51% attack (Nor a deep reorganisation, five years) | ✓ | |
| Decentralisation | 5.5 | section average, 7 of 8 measured |
| Censorship resistant (Source) | 10 | No authority can halt the chain or freeze funds: No protocol key can freeze native AXL; gateway and bridge parameters are governed by validators and governance proposals. source |
| No central team (Source) | 0 | A central team directs it: axelar-core (Apache 2.0) is developed by Interop Labs, which employs nearly all core developers. source |
| Who can mint (Source) | 8.6 | Proof of stake: 8.6 of 10 on the ladder of who produces blocks |
| Nodes (Source) | 5.4 | 42 reachable nodes source |
| Holder concentration (Source) | — | Not yet measured |
| Premine (allocated at launch) | 2.1 | 79.5% of today's supply allocated at launch to founders, a company, a foundation or investors. 1B AXL at genesis (Sep 2022): company/team 29.5%, backers 29.54%, community programs 35.96%, CoinList community sale 5%, against current total supply 1,258,237,887 AXL (Axelar bank module, 2026-10-23). source |
| Fundraising | 2.1 | Sold by its issuer or insiders: 79.5% of supply was theirs to sell, 29.8% sold so far. Backers (seed 13.40%, Series A 12.64%, Series B 3.50% = 29.54%) and the March 2022 CoinList community sale (5%) took 345.4M of the 1B genesis AXL. The Axelar Foundation disclosed in March 2025 just over $30M of AXL token sales; only part came from its community-programs allocation (price undisclosed; AXL traded ~$0.35-0.9 over the period), estimated at 0-60M AXL. ~345M-405M / 1,258.24M total supply (Axelar bank module, 2026-10-23) = 27.5%-32.2%; midpoint 29.8%. $3.75M seed (DCVC, Binance X, Naval Ravikant), $25M Series A led by Polychain (Dragonfly, Galaxy), $35M Series B at $1B valuation, plus a 5% CoinList community sale (March 2022). source |
| Developer share (after launch) | 10 | Developer share: about 0.04% of today's supply received so far; no share of new block rewards today. Mint-module inflation is now 0 (removal of the 1% base rate passed 28 Mar 2025). The remaining inflation (0.2% per external EVM chain) is minted by the reward module and paid straight to validators via AllocateTokensToValidator, skipping the 2% community tax, which now applies only to fees. Before Mar 2025, 2% of the ~1%/yr mint-module issuance (about 27M AXL over 2.5 years) went to the community pool: ~0.5M, or ~0.04% of 1,258M supply. source |
| Privacy | 2 | section average |
| Privacy (5 checks) | 2 | 1 of 5 passed source |
| Protocol level privacy (Keys not tied to an identity · Whitepaper §10) | ✓ | Any key can hold and send AXL; the Cosmos SDK bank and auth modules carry no identity check. |
| UTXO ledger (A new key for each payment · Whitepaper §2, §9) | ✗ | |
| Network privacy (Origin hidden by default) | ✗ | CometBFT gossip relays transactions directly. |
| Hidden amounts (Amounts confidential) | ✗ | No confidential transactions. |
| Hidden parties (Sender and receiver hidden) | ✗ | No sender or receiver hiding. |
| Programmability (tokens, contracts, 5 checks) | 2.2 | 2 of 9 points source |
| Token issuance | 0 | No token issuance on the chain itself |
| Smart contracts | 0 | CosmWasm upload and instantiation limited to a single governance address; users send fixed messages. |
| Multisig and time locks (Without a third party) | ✓ | Native Cosmos SDK multisig accounts and vesting accounts wired into the app. |
| Atomic swaps (With other chains) | ✗ | No open contract platform or HTLC module to express a swap. |
| Native exchange (Built into the protocol) | ✗ | No exchange module. |
| Cross-chain messaging (Verified by the chain itself) | ✓ | Validators run nodes of connected chains, vote on observed transactions and jointly control each chain's Gateway contract by key shares (General Message Passing), besides IBC channels. |
| NFTs (Carried by the chain's rules) | ✗ | No NFT module; contracts are gated. |
| Supply & Demand | 7.6 | group average |
| Supply & Demand (Source) | 7.5 | average of 6 measures |
| Exchanges (10 or more: 10) | 10 | 37 exchanges |
| Daily volume ($10K 0, $1B or more 10) | 4.8 | $943,550 traded in 24 hours; #390 by volume on the exchanges the site reads (scored on the median day of the last 30, $2,602,679) |
| Turnover (volume ÷ market cap, 5% a day: 10) | 9.3 | 3.6% of its market cap a day, median of the last 30 days |
| Order-book depth (bids and asks within 2% ÷ market cap, 1%: 10) | 8.9 | $287,867 within 2% of the price on 5 exchanges, 0.48% of its market cap, median of the last 2 days |
| Market cap ($1M 0, $10B or more 10) | 4.4 | $60M, 4.4 on a scale of 2.5 points per tenfold |
| Paper trading (futures, options and margin ÷ market cap, 0%: 10, 100%: 0) | 7.5 | futures, options and margin positions 6.1% of its market cap |
| Supply (smaller is better) | 7.6 | no fixed maximum; 1.25 billion in circulation |
| Record | 7.3 | 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) | 4 | 4 full years since 2022-09-27, the first day with a recorded price (genesis not yet researched, so the age can only be understated). |
| Development (work, improvements, unfixed issues) | 8 | 3 positive, 0 negative, 1 not yet researched source |
| Positive | ||
| Steady work, 6 of 6 | ✓ | 290 commits in 12 of the last 12 months (github.com/axelarnetwork/axelar-core); axelar-core v1.6.0 released 2026-10-02. |
| Shipped a security fix in two years, +1 | ✓ | axelar-core v1.3.8, Jan 2026: CometBFT fix for CSA-2026-001; v1.4.8/v1.4.10 MsgRouteMessage hardening; v1.5.3, Aug 2026: vote and fee hardening. |
| Shipped a new capability for users in two years, +1 | ✓ | v1.5 upgrade, Aug 2026: x/authz scoped, revocable grants. |
| Not yet researched | ||
| Shipped a scaling upgrade in two years | – | |
Twenty criteria, weighted equally. The Cryptocurrency Standards have five sections: sound money (six qualities: scarcity, durability, fungibility, portability, divisibility, verifiability), scalability (four measures and three features), security (miner pay and seven checks), decentralisation (censorship resistance, no central team, who can mint, nodes, holders, premine, fundraising and developer share) and privacy (five checks); programmability (token issuance, smart contracts and five checks) follows them. 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.
1,251,584,625 AXL are in circulation, against no fixed cap — issuance has no defined end.
| Premine (allocated at launch) | 79.5% of today's supply |
|---|---|
| Sold by the issuer or insiders | 29.8% of today's supply |
| Developer share received since launch | 0.04% of today's supply |
| Developer share of new coins today | 0% |
| Nodes or validators | 42 |
| Fundraising | Private or venture funding |
1B AXL at genesis (Sep 2022): company/team 29.5%, backers 29.54%, community programs 35.96%, CoinList community sale 5%, against current total supply 1,258,237,887 AXL (Axelar bank module, 2026-10-23).
$3.75M seed (DCVC, Binance X, Naval Ravikant), $25M Series A led by Polychain (Dragonfly, Galaxy), $35M Series B at $1B valuation, plus a 5% CoinList community sale (March 2022).
Backers (seed 13.40%, Series A 12.64%, Series B 3.50% = 29.54%) and the March 2022 CoinList community sale (5%) took 345.4M of the 1B genesis AXL. The Axelar Foundation disclosed in March 2025 just over $30M of AXL token sales; only part came from its community-programs allocation (price undisclosed; AXL traded ~$0.35-0.9 over the period), estimated at 0-60M AXL. ~345M-405M / 1,258.24M total supply (Axelar bank module, 2026-10-23) = 27.5%-32.2%; midpoint 29.8%.
Mint-module inflation is now 0 (removal of the 1% base rate passed 28 Mar 2025). The remaining inflation (0.2% per external EVM chain) is minted by the reward module and paid straight to validators via AllocateTokensToValidator, skipping the 2% community tax, which now applies only to fees. Before Mar 2025, 2% of the ~1%/yr mint-module issuance (about 27M AXL over 2.5 years) went to the community pool: ~0.5M, or ~0.04% of 1,258M supply.
Sources: theblock.co · everstake.one · tokenomist.ai · coinlist.co · axelar-rest.publicnode.com · axelar-rest.publicnode.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.
Axelar is #76 among cryptocurrencies and #402 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 326 places between Axelar'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 1 wrapped and staked claim on Axelar →