Handshake (HNS)
Handshake ranks #208 of 484 cryptocurrencies. On a list that also counts tokens, memecoins, wrapped coins, staked derivatives and stablecoins it appears at #1635: 1427 of the 1634 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 1915 non-native assets CoinSpectrum lists above it by market cap, about 61% are tokens, 32% are claims on other assets, 5% are memecoins and 1% are NFT collections.
| CoinSpectrum Grade | A · 69/100 · provisional, B to A |
|---|---|
| Rank among cryptocurrencies | #208 |
| Rank counting claims | #1635 |
| Market capitalisation | $2M |
| Price | $0.00257 |
| Circulating supply | 677,730,457 HNS |
| Maximum supply | 961,271,165 HNS |
| Consensus family | Proof of Work |
| Consensus mechanism | Blake2b + SHA3 |
| Own hashrate | 549 TH/s |
| Network purpose | General purpose |
| Ledger type | Single-asset ledger |
| Launch distribution | Presale |
Market figures from the 10 November 2026 build. Open the live view for every exchange's price, and charts.
CoinSpectrum Grade (Source)
A — 69 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 61 to 70 (B 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) | 8.3 | fixed maximum supply of 961 million |
| Distribution | 8.3 | average of 3 parts |
| Holder concentration (Source) | – | Not yet measured |
| Active addresses | – | Not yet measured |
| Premine (allocated at launch) | 6.2 | 38% of today's supply allocated at launch to founders, a company, a foundation or investors. The consensus code pre-allocates 1.36B of the 2.04B cap: airdrop to FOSS developers 952M, creators (pre-development team) 102M, sponsors 102M, CA/naming 102M, TLD holders 51M and domain holders 51M. All are claim-based. As of block 239,664 (2024-08-25), 690.9M had been issued against ~409.7M mined, so ~281M was claimed allocations. With ~517M mined by now and at least 63M burned, ~281M / ~735M = about 38%. source |
| Fundraising (share sold) (Source) | 8.6 | Sold by its issuer or insiders: 14% of supply sold. $10.2M from sponsors (a16z, SV Angel, Draper Associates and others) for 102M HNS at $0.10. The proceeds were donated to FOSS projects and non-profits. source |
| Developer share (after launch) | 10 | No developer share: every new coin goes to the miners or validators who produce blocks. All block subsidies go to miners. The claim-based allocations (FOSS airdrop, creators, sponsors, names) are genesis premine, not a cut of issuance. source |
| Decentralisation | 10 | average of 3 parts |
| Governance (Source) | 10 | No authority can halt the chain or freeze funds: No protocol-level party can freeze or claw back coins or halt the chain; reserved-name and airdrop rules are fixed in consensus. source |
| No central team (Source) | 10 | No central team: hsd is maintained by volunteer contributors in the handshake-org GitHub organisation under the MIT licence; 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 | 5.2 | 4.2 of 8 points source |
| Pool diversity (Largest pool 50% 0 to 20% 10, largest three 90% 0 to 50% 10; 2 points) | 0.8 | largest 45.5%, largest three 98.5% |
| Network activity (Transactions a day, 250 0, 500,000 or more 10; 2 points) | 3.7 | about 4,144 transactions a day |
| Hashrate (Own work 5, its power 1 kW 0 to 10 GW 5; 1 point) | 6.5 | own work 5; about 127 kW, 1.5 of 5; 1.1% of its algorithm's largest, not scored |
| 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) | 6 | one client, latest version Jul 2025, within 24 months |
| Open source (Node software) | ✓ | |
| No 51% attack (Nor a deep reorganisation, five years) | ✓ | |
| Scalability | 7.6 | average of 5 parts source |
| Fees ($0.001 or less 10, $1 or more 0) | 10 | typical fee $2e-7 |
| Throughput (2,478 a second, the busiest network's peak day, 10; 121, the median of the ten busiest, 5) | 1.2 | about 12 simple transactions a second |
| Block time (10 minutes 10, less either side) | 10 | a block every 10 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) | 6.7 | 4 MB limit |
| Features (3 checks) | 10 | 3 of 3 passed |
| Fast payments (Safe to accept within seconds · Whitepaper abstract, §1, §2 and §11) | ✓ | hsd's mempool rejects any transaction spending an input already in the mempool (bad-txns-inputs-spent) and has no replace-by-fee, so it relays first-seen; blocks are 10 minutes and there are no double-spend proofs. |
| Pruned nodes (Old history dropped, every rule checked · Whitepaper §7) | ✓ | hsd full node has a prune option that discards old block data. |
| Light clients (Payments verified from headers · Whitepaper §8) | ✓ | hsd includes an SPV node (lib/node/spvnode.js) verifying headers and Merkle/Urkel proofs. |
| 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 | Addresses are hashes of keys users generate themselves; the node checks scripts and signatures, with no identity condition in its consensus rules. |
| 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 | Transparent UTXO amounts (blinded bids apply only to name auctions). |
| Hidden parties (Sender and receiver hidden) | 0 | Transparent addresses; no ring signatures or stealth addresses. |
| Network privacy (Origin hidden by default) | 0 | hsd relays transactions directly; no Dandelion or built-in Tor. |
| Programmability | 3.3 | 3 of 9 points source |
| Token issuance | 0 | No token issuance on the chain itself |
| Smart contracts (Scripting for spending conditions) | 1 | Bitcoin-style Script plus fixed name covenants (auctions, transfers, records); no general-purpose contracts. |
| Multisig and time locks (Without a third party) | ✓ | OP_CHECKMULTISIG, OP_CHECKLOCKTIMEVERIFY and OP_CHECKSEQUENCEVERIFY in hsd's script engine. |
| Atomic swaps (With other chains) | ✓ | Script can express HTLCs (hash check, including OP_SHA3/OP_BLAKE, plus CLTV/CSV refund). |
| Native DEX (Trades the coin itself, not a claim) | ✗ | No DEX found trading the coin itself: none on its own chain (DefiLlama), and not on THORChain, Maya, Chainflip, Komodo DeFi, BasicSwap, Bisq or Haveno (checked 2026-11-04). |
| Cross-chain messaging (Verified by the chain itself) | ✗ | No cross-chain feature in the protocol. |
| NFTs (Carried by the chain's rules) | ✗ | Names are unique, transferable ledger objects under covenants, but there is no general token or NFT type that users issue; medium confidence on whether names should count. |
| Demand | 1.8 | average of 7 measures |
| Exchanges (10 or more: 10) | 1 | 1 exchange |
| Daily volume ($10K 0, $1B or more 10) | 0 | $432 traded in 24 hours; #3738 by volume on the exchanges the site reads (scored on the median day of the last 30, $228) |
| Turnover (volume ÷ market cap, 5% a day: 10) | 0 | 0.01% of its market cap a day, median of the last 30 days |
| Order-book depth (±2% of the price ÷ market cap, 1%: 10) | 0 | $0 within 2% of the price on 1 exchange, 0.00% of its market cap, median of the last 15 days |
| Market cap ($1M 0, $10B or more 10) | 0.6 | $1.7M, 0.6 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 | 7.3 | average of 3 criteria |
| Age (years since genesis) (Source) | 6 | 6 full years since 2020-02-21, the first day with a recorded price (genesis not yet researched, so the age can only be understated). |
| Development (work, fixes, vulnerabilities) | 6 | 1 positive, 0 negative source |
| Positive | ||
| Steady work, 6 of 6 | ✓ | 0 commits in 0 of the last 12 months (github.com/handshake-org/hsd); hsd v8.0.0 released 2025-07-01, after v7.0.0 (2024-12-09) and v7.0.1 (2024-12-27): three releases in the last 24 months, none since July 2025. |
| 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+
Phoenixcoin PXC
Hathor HTRB
Signum SIGNA
Crypton CRPAll 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
677,730,457 of a maximum 961,271,165 HNS are in circulation — 70.5% of the total that will ever exist.
Launch and allocation
| Premine (allocated at launch) | 38% of today's supply |
|---|---|
| Sold by the issuer or insiders | 14% of today's supply |
| Developer share received since launch | 0% of today's supply |
| Developer share of new coins today | 0% |
| Fundraising | Private or venture funding |
The consensus code pre-allocates 1.36B of the 2.04B cap: airdrop to FOSS developers 952M, creators (pre-development team) 102M, sponsors 102M, CA/naming 102M, TLD holders 51M and domain holders 51M. All are claim-based. As of block 239,664 (2024-08-25), 690.9M had been issued against ~409.7M mined, so ~281M was claimed allocations. With ~517M mined by now and at least 63M burned, ~281M / ~735M = about 38%.
$10.2M from sponsors (a16z, SV Angel, Draper Associates and others) for 102M HNS at $0.10. The proceeds were donated to FOSS projects and non-profits.
All block subsidies go to miners. The claim-based allocations (FOSS airdrop, creators, sponsors, names) are genesis premine, not a cut of issuance.
The current-supply figures are estimated from the August 2024 HIP data plus elapsed blocks; no live explorer API answered. A 2024 proposal (HIP) would burn the unclaimed airdrop and name claims, lowering the cap to ~898M; adoption was not confirmed. The site's max of 961M may reflect a similar adjustment.
Sources: github.com · heytx.substack.com · blockchannel.substack.com. Researched 2026-10-24, high confidence.
The work behind it
Handshake is secured by 549 TH/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 Handshake
Handshake is #208 among cryptocurrencies and #1635 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 1427 places between Handshake'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).