Ergo (ERG)
Ergo ranks #125 of 484 cryptocurrencies. On a list that also counts tokens, memecoins, wrapped coins, staked derivatives and stablecoins it appears at #927: 802 of the 926 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 953 non-native assets CoinSpectrum lists above it by market cap, about 55% are tokens, 35% are claims on other assets, 9% are memecoins and 1% are NFT collections.
| CoinSpectrum Grade | A+ · 80/100 · provisional, A to A+ |
|---|---|
| Rank among cryptocurrencies | #125 |
| Rank counting claims | #927 |
| Market capitalisation | $16M |
| Price | $0.1909 |
| Circulating supply | 83,540,031 ERG |
| Maximum supply | no fixed cap |
| Consensus family | Proof of Work |
| Consensus mechanism | Autolykos v2 |
| Own hashrate | 491 GH/s |
| Ledger type | Multi-asset ledger |
| Launch distribution | No premine |
Market figures from the 10 November 2026 build. Open the live view for every exchange's price, and charts.
CoinSpectrum Grade (Source)
A+ — 80 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 80 (A to A+).
| Section and criteria | Score | Basis |
|---|---|---|
| Consensus | 10 | average of 2 criteria |
| By leader (its largest chain's market cap) (Source) | 10 | Proof of work: 10 of 10 on the ladder of consensus families ranked by their largest chain's market cap |
| By family (all its chains' market cap) (Source) | 10 | Proof of work: 10 of 10 on the ladder of families ranked by the combined market cap of their chains |
| Supply | 8.5 | the supply scale times 0.9, and a point for a fixed cap that holds |
| Supply (21 million scores 10) | 9.4 | no fixed maximum; 83.5 million in circulation |
| Distribution | 9.8 | average of 3 parts |
| Holder concentration (Source) | – | Not yet measured |
| Active addresses | – | Not yet measured |
| Premine (allocated at launch) | 10 | 0% of today's supply allocated at launch to founders, a company, a foundation or investors. No genesis allocation to insiders beyond the Foundation treasury, which was released per block alongside mining over the first ~2.5 years and is now scored as a block-reward cut. No sale or instamine. source |
| Fundraising (share sold) (Source) | 10 | No sale of the coin source |
| Developer share (after launch) | 9.5 | Developer share: about 5.2% of today's supply received so far; no share of new block rewards today. 4,330,791.5 ERG (4.43% of the 97.74M emission) went to the Ergo Foundation treasury. The coins sat in a genesis box but were released block by block by contract alongside the miners' emission (7.5 ERG of the 75 ERG per block at the start), over the first ~2.5 years, ending in 2021. That works like a founders' reward. 4.33M / 83.50M current supply = 5.2%. EIP-27 re-emission (since 2022) holds back part of the miner reward and pays it to later miners, so it is not a cut. source |
| Decentralisation | 10 | average of 3 parts |
| Governance (Source) | 10 | No authority can halt the chain or freeze funds: No party can freeze or claw back ERG. source |
| No central team (Source) | 10 | No central team: The reference node (ergoplatform/ergo, CC0) is maintained by core developers funded by the Ergo Foundation alongside independent community contributors; no company controls it. source |
| Who can mint (Source) | 10 | Open to anyone with hardware: anyone can produce blocks by mining, no permission needed |
| Nodes (Source) | – | Not yet counted |
| Security | 5.6 | 4.5 of 8 points source |
| Pool diversity (Largest pool 50% 0 to 20% 10, largest three 90% 0 to 50% 10; 2 points) | 1.6 | largest 51.3%, largest three 77.6% |
| Network activity (Transactions a day, 250 0, 500,000 or more 10; 2 points) | 3.8 | about 4,580 transactions a day |
| Hashrate (Own work 5, its power 1 kW 0 to 10 GW 5; 1 point) | 7 | own work 5; about 706 kW, 2 of 5; the largest on its algorithm |
| 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 | 6.9 | average of 5 parts source |
| Fees ($0.001 or less 10, $1 or more 0) | 10 | typical fee $0.0003 |
| Throughput (2,478 a second, the busiest network's peak day, 10; 121, the median of the ten busiest, 5) | 2.5 | about 26 simple transactions a second |
| Block time (10 minutes 10, less either side) | 7.5 | a block every 2 minutes |
| Block space per 10 minutes (24 MB or more 10: the ten busiest networks' median demand, 16.4 MB, and half again for growth) | 7.6 | 1.27 MB limit, 6.36 MB per 10 minutes |
| Features (3 checks) | 6.7 | 2 of 3 passed |
| Fast payments (Safe to accept within seconds · Whitepaper abstract, §1, §2 and §11) | ✗ | Blocks are about 2 minutes apart with probabilistic finality, and the mempool lets a higher-fee double-spend replace an unconfirmed transaction. |
| Pruned nodes (Old history dropped, every rule checked · Whitepaper §7) | ✓ | Ergo node pruned mode (stateType=utxo, blocksToKeep > 0) with UTXO-set snapshot bootstrapping. |
| Light clients (Payments verified from headers · Whitepaper §8) | ✓ | Protocol-level NiPoPoW proofs let a light SPV client bootstrap and validate the header chain and check transactions against headers. |
| Privacy | 7 | 7 of 10: whitepaper privacy 7 of 7, extra features 0 of 3, 1 not yet researched source |
| Protocol level privacy (Keys not tied to an identity · Whitepaper §10) | 10 | Anyone can generate keys and receive and send coins; the consensus rules carry no identity check. |
| UTXO ledger (Separate outputs, change to a new address · Whitepaper §2, §9) | 10 | Coins are separate unspent outputs: a payment spends whole outputs and sends the change to a new address, so the coins in one wallet need not share a history. |
| HD addresses (A new address for each payment, unlinked · Whitepaper §10) | – | |
| Hidden amounts (Amounts confidential) | 0 | Amounts are public on the UTXO chain. |
| Hidden parties (Sender and receiver hidden) | 0 | Sigma protocols allow ring signatures in scripts, but there are no protocol stealth addresses; mixing (ErgoMixer) is an application. |
| Network privacy (Origin hidden by default) | 0 | The Ergo node gossips transactions directly; no Dandelion or built-in Tor. |
| Programmability | 8.9 | 8 of 9 points source |
| Token issuance (At protocol level) | 2 | Native tokens in the UTXO protocol since launch in 2019: any transaction can mint a token, with the EIP-4 metadata convention. |
| Smart contracts (General-purpose) | 2 | ErgoScript contracts on the eUTXO model since the 2019 mainnet, with DEXes and stablecoins built on them. |
| Multisig and time locks (Without a third party) | ✓ | Sigma-protocol threshold signatures (atLeast) and HEIGHT conditions in ErgoScript. |
| Atomic swaps (With other chains) | ✓ | Hash- and height-locked ErgoScript contracts express HTLCs. |
| Native DEX (Trades the coin itself, not a claim) | ✓ | Traded as itself, not as a wrapped token or a claim: Bisq; its own chain's DEXes (Ergo, DefiLlama); Spectrum, an AMM on Ergo. |
| Cross-chain messaging (Verified by the chain itself) | ✗ | No protocol-level cross-chain messaging; Rosen Bridge is run by a watcher and guard set. |
| NFTs (Carried by the chain's rules) | ✓ | Native tokens with a supply of one, with NFT categories in the EIP-4 asset standard. |
| Demand | 4.2 | average of 7 measures |
| Exchanges (10 or more: 10) | 4 | 4 exchanges |
| Daily volume ($10K 0, $1B or more 10) | 2.1 | $114,224 traded in 24 hours; #1514 by volume on the exchanges the site reads (scored on the median day of the last 30, $109,176) |
| Turnover (volume ÷ market cap, 5% a day: 10) | 4.3 | 0.42% of its market cap a day, median of the last 30 days |
| Order-book depth (±2% of the price ÷ market cap, 1%: 10) | 5.1 | $5,517 within 2% of the price on 3 exchanges, 0.03% of its market cap, median of the last 15 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 |
| Wallet support (wallets that hold it, 10 or more: 10) | 1 | its own node and wallet, counted as 1: no wallet in the site's directory lists it yet |
| Record | 8.7 | average of 3 criteria |
| Age (years since genesis) (Source) | 9 | 9 full years since 2017-06-29, the first day with a recorded price (genesis not yet researched, so the age can only be understated). |
| Development (work, fixes, vulnerabilities) | 7 | 2 positive, 0 negative, 1 not yet researched source |
| Positive | ||
| Steady work, 6 of 6 | ✓ | 511 commits in 12 of the last 12 months (github.com/ergoplatform/ergo); Ergo reference client 6.0.8 released 2026-10-13 (6.1.7 2026-10-01). |
| Shipped a new capability for users in two years, +1 | ✓ | Sigma 6.0 soft fork (EIP-50), activated Oct 2025: new ErgoScript types and methods (unsigned big integers, BLS verification, etc.); block version 4 on chain. |
| Not yet researched | ||
| Shipped a scaling upgrade in two years | – | |
| Conduct (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 | ✓ | |
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 Work coins
Bitcoin BTCA+
Zcash ZECA+
Dogecoin DOGEA+
Quantus QTCB
Namecoin NMCA
Epic Private Internet Cash EPICA
Firo FIROAAll Proof of Work chains →Proof of Stake coins
Ethereum ETHA+
BNB BNBA
Solana SOLA+
TRON TRXA
Hyperliquid HYPEB
Cardano ADAA
NEAR Protocol NEARAAll Proof of Stake chains →Supply
83,540,031 ERG are in circulation, against no fixed cap — issuance has no defined end.
Launch and allocation
| Premine (allocated at launch) | 0% of today's supply |
|---|---|
| Developer share received since launch | 5.2% of today's supply |
| Developer share of new coins today | 0% |
| Fundraising | No sale and no investor round |
No genesis allocation to insiders beyond the Foundation treasury, which was released per block alongside mining over the first ~2.5 years and is now scored as a block-reward cut. No sale or instamine.
No ICO and no sale. Development was funded by the treasury share of block rewards.
4,330,791.5 ERG (4.43% of the 97.74M emission) went to the Ergo Foundation treasury. The coins sat in a genesis box but were released block by block by contract alongside the miners' emission (7.5 ERG of the 75 ERG per block at the start), over the first ~2.5 years, ending in 2021. That works like a founders' reward. 4.33M / 83.50M current supply = 5.2%. EIP-27 re-emission (since 2022) holds back part of the miner reward and pays it to later miners, so it is not a cut.
The treasury is a founders' reward paid out of emission, so it counts as an insider allocation. The Foundation has spent treasury ERG on development, but no breakdown of market sales was found, so soldPct is left null.
Sources: docs.ergoplatform.com · github.com · api.ergoplatform.com. Researched 2026-10-24, high confidence.
The work behind it
Ergo is secured by 491 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.
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 Ergo
Ergo is #125 among cryptocurrencies and #927 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 802 places between Ergo'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).