Ethereum (ETH)

ETH price chart

Ethereum ranks #2 of 484 cryptocurrencies — assets with their own blockchain and their own consensus mechanism.

CoinSpectrum GradeA+ · 81/100 · provisional
Rank among cryptocurrencies#2
Rank counting claims#2
Market capitalisation$247.7B
Price$2,027
Circulating supply122,206,811 ETH
Maximum supplyno fixed cap
Consensus familyProof of Stake
Consensus mechanismGasper (Casper-FFG + LMD-GHOST)
Active addresses a day782,317 October 2026 median, Coin Metrics
Network purposeSmart-contract platform
Ledger typeMulti-asset ledger
Launch distributionPresale
Regulatory classCommodity

Market figures from the 10 November 2026 build. Open the live view for every exchange's price, and charts.

CoinSpectrum Grade (Source)

A+ — 81 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 78 to 82 (A+ to A+).

Section and criteriaScoreBasis
Consensus9.1average of 2 criteria
By leader (its largest chain's market cap) (Source)9.1Proof 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)9.1Proof of stake: 9.1 of 10 on the ladder of families ranked by the combined market cap of their chains
Supply8.3the supply scale times 0.9, and a point for a fixed cap that holds
Supply (21 million scores 10)9.2no fixed maximum; 122 million in circulation
Distribution7.3average of 4 parts
Holder concentration (Source)–Not yet measured
Active addresses10782,317 addresses active a day, the median of October 2026's 31 days (Coin Metrics community data) source
Premine (allocated at launch)4.158.9% of today's supply allocated at launch to founders, a company, a foundation or investors. Genesis allocation of 72,009,990.5 ETH (about 60M sold in the 2014 crowdsale plus about 12M to early contributors and the Ethereum Foundation) against a current total supply of 122,155,370 ETH (Etherscan supply page, 2026-10-23). source
Fundraising (share sold) (Source)5.1Sold by its issuer or insiders: 49.2% of supply sold. 60,102,216 ETH sold in the July-September 2014 public ether sale for about 31,500 BTC; the ~12M ETH to early contributors and the Foundation were not sold. 60,102,216 / 122,155,370 ETH current supply (Etherscan, 2026-10-23) = 49.2%. 42-day public ether sale, July to September 2014, open to anyone paying in BTC (2000 ETH/BTC falling to 1337 ETH/BTC). Raised about 31,500 BTC (about $18M at the time). Two extra pools, each 0.099x the ether sold, went to early contributors and the Foundation endowment. No private or venture round in ETH. source
Developer share (after launch)10No developer share: every new coin goes to the miners or validators who produce blocks. No cut. Proof-of-work block rewards (2015-2022) went entirely to miners, and proof-of-stake issuance since the September 2022 Merge goes entirely to validators. The EIP-1559 base-fee burn is a burn, not a cut. source
Decentralisation9average of 3 parts
Governance (Source)10No authority can halt the chain or freeze funds: No protocol-level key or party can freeze or claw back ETH; issuer blacklists exist only inside individual token contracts. source
No central team (Source)10No central team: Several independent client teams (Geth/Ethereum Foundation, Nethermind, Besu, Erigon, Reth/Paradigm) and an open EIP process; no single organisation approves protocol changes. source
Who can mint (Source)7Gated by stake: any holder with enough stake can validate: access bought with coins
Nodes (Source)–Not yet counted
Security8.87.1 of 8 points source
Pool diversity (Largest pool 50% 0 to 20% 10, largest three 90% 0 to 50% 10; 2 points)9.8largest 21.2%, largest three 43.6%
Network activity (Transactions a day, 250 0, 500,000 or more 10; 2 points)10about 1,815,335 transactions a day
Hashrate (Own work 5, its power 1 kW 0 to 10 GW 5; 1 point)1not 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)10Geth (Ethereum Foundation, v1.17.10, Oct 2026), Nethermind, Besu, Erigon and Reth (Paradigm), each its own codebase and team
Open source (Node software)✓
No 51% attack (Nor a deep reorganisation, five years)✓
Scalability6.9average of 5 parts source
Fees ($0.001 or less 10, $1 or more 0)8typical fee $0.004
Throughput (2,478 a second, the busiest network's peak day, 10; 121, the median of the ten busiest, 5)6.1about 238 simple transactions a second
Block time (10 minutes 10, less either side)3.9a block every 12 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)101.5 MB limit (converted from its gas, compute, mass or count limit), 75 MB per 10 minutes
Features (3 checks)6.72 of 3 passed
Fast payments (Safe to accept within seconds · Whitepaper abstract, §1, §2 and §11)✗Blocks every 12 s, but economic finality (two Casper-FFG epochs) takes about 13 minutes.
Pruned nodes (Old history dropped, every rule checked · Whitepaper §7)✓Partial history expiry (Jul 2025): every execution client can run without pre-Merge blocks (geth --history.chain postmerge), on top of state pruning.
Light clients (Payments verified from headers · Whitepaper §8)✓Altair (Oct 2021): sync committees of 512 validators sign headers so light clients verify without trusting a server.
Privacy4.74.7 of 10: whitepaper privacy 4.7 of 7, extra features 0 of 3 source
Protocol level privacy (Keys not tied to an identity · Whitepaper §10)10Any secp256k1 key can hold and send ETH; the chain's account and transfer rules carry no identity check.
UTXO ledger (Separate outputs, change to a new address · Whitepaper §2, §9)0An 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)10BIP32 extended public key (xpub): a watch-only wallet derives each new receiving address without the private key; each address that sends needs its own ETH for fees
Hidden amounts (Amounts confidential)0No shielded pool or confidential transactions in the protocol; privacy contracts are applications.
Hidden parties (Sender and receiver hidden)0No protocol-level sender or receiver hiding.
Network privacy (Origin hidden by default)0Geth and the consensus clients gossip transactions directly over devp2p/libp2p; no Dandelion or built-in Tor.
Programmability8.98 of 9 points source
Token issuance (At protocol level)2ERC-20 (and ERC-721/1155) contracts on its EVM, open to any account since launch in 2015.
Smart contracts (General-purpose)2The EVM, open to any account since the 2015 launch, runs DEXs, lending and other applications on mainnet.
Multisig and time locks (Without a third party)✓N-of-M multisig contract accounts (Safe and others) and time-delayed execution contracts such as OpenZeppelin's TimelockController.
Atomic swaps (With other chains)✓HTLC contracts (secret hash plus block-number timelock refund), e.g. Garden's EVM HTLC used for BTC swaps.
Native DEX (Trades the coin itself, not a claim)✓Traded as itself, not as a wrapped token or a claim: THORChain; Maya Protocol; Chainflip; Komodo DeFi; Bisq; its own chain's DEXes (Ethereum, DefiLlama).
Cross-chain messaging (Verified by the chain itself)✗No protocol-level messaging to other chains; rollup and bridge contracts are deployed by third parties.
NFTs (Carried by the chain's rules)✓ERC-721 NFT contracts run by every node on the EVM.
Demand8.5average of 7 measures
Exchanges (10 or more: 10)1046 exchanges
Daily volume ($10K 0, $1B or more 10)10$4,464,272,601 traded in 24 hours; #4 by volume on the exchanges the site reads (scored on the median day of the last 30, $3,053,649,187)
Turnover (volume ÷ market cap, 5% a day: 10)6.51.1% of its market cap a day, median of the last 30 days
Order-book depth (±2% of the price ÷ market cap, 1%: 10)5.9$143,119,333 within 2% of the price on 9 exchanges, 0.06% of its market cap, median of the last 15 days; a lower bound: the books returned by 3 of them stop short of 2%
Market cap ($1M 0, $10B or more 10)10$248B, at the top of the scale
Paper trading (futures, options and margin ÷ market cap, 0%: 10, 100%: 0)6.8futures, options and margin positions 10.0% of its market cap
Wallet support (wallets that hold it, 10 or more: 10)1034 wallets in the site's wallet directory
Record9.7average of 3 criteria
Age (years since genesis) (Source)1011 full years since genesis. Genesis block mined 30 July 2015.
Development (work, fixes, vulnerabilities)94 positive, 0 negative source
Positive
Steady work, 6 of 6✓1,326 commits in 12 of the last 12 months (github.com/ethereum/go-ethereum); go-ethereum v1.17.10, 23 Oct 2026; 35 releases in the last 24 months.
Shipped a security fix in two years, +1✓Geth 1.14.13, Jan 2025: fixed CVE-2025-24883 (p2p DoS); Geth 1.16.8/1.16.9, early 2026: fixed CVE-2026-22862, CVE-2026-26314 and CVE-2026-26315.
Shipped a scaling upgrade in two years, +1✓Pectra, 7 May 2025: blob target doubled (EIP-7691); Fusaka, 3 Dec 2025: PeerDAS and blob-parameter forks; gas limit raised 36M to 45M to 60M during 2025.
Shipped a new capability for users in two years, +1✓Pectra, 7 May 2025: EIP-7702 lets externally owned accounts set contract code (account abstraction).
Conduct (origin, claims, halts)103 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 Stake coins

BNB BNBASolana SOLA+TRON TRXAHyperliquid HYPEBCardano ADAANEAR Protocol NEARAAvalanche AVAXAAll 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

122,206,811 ETH are in circulation, against no fixed cap — issuance has no defined end.

Launch and allocation

Premine (allocated at launch)58.9% of today's supply
Sold by the issuer or insiders49.2% of today's supply
Developer share received since launch0% of today's supply
Developer share of new coins today0%
FundraisingPublic sale

Genesis allocation of 72,009,990.5 ETH (about 60M sold in the 2014 crowdsale plus about 12M to early contributors and the Ethereum Foundation) against a current total supply of 122,155,370 ETH (Etherscan supply page, 2026-10-23).

42-day public ether sale, July to September 2014, open to anyone paying in BTC (2000 ETH/BTC falling to 1337 ETH/BTC). Raised about 31,500 BTC (about $18M at the time). Two extra pools, each 0.099x the ether sold, went to early contributors and the Foundation endowment. No private or venture round in ETH.

60,102,216 ETH sold in the July-September 2014 public ether sale for about 31,500 BTC; the ~12M ETH to early contributors and the Foundation were not sold. 60,102,216 / 122,155,370 ETH current supply (Etherscan, 2026-10-23) = 49.2%.

No cut. Proof-of-work block rewards (2015-2022) went entirely to miners, and proof-of-stake issuance since the September 2022 Merge goes entirely to validators. The EIP-1559 base-fee burn is a burn, not a cut.

Sources: blog.ethereum.org · etherscan.io · ethereum.org · eips.ethereum.org · ultrasound.money. Researched 2026-10-24, high confidence.

What a regulator has said

Officially a digital commodity (SEC-CFTC, Mar 2026) AND contested — its securities status was alleged or widely disputed. Both classifications apply. Context: ~60% of supply was pre-issued in the 2014 ICO (no mining).

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 Ethereum

Ethereum is #2 among cryptocurrencies and #2 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. Nothing above Ethereum is a claim or a token, so its two ranks agree. 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 45 wrapped and staked claims on Ethereum →

Wallets that hold Ethereum

MetaMaskRabbyLedgerTrezorTrust WalletRainbowBitBox02D'CENTKeystoneNGRAVE ZEROSafePalTangem22 more in the directory

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