Kava (KAVA)
Kava ranks #63 of 484 cryptocurrencies. On a list that also counts tokens, memecoins, wrapped coins, staked derivatives and stablecoins it appears at #322: 259 of the 321 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 334 non-native assets CoinSpectrum lists above it by market cap, about 49% are claims on other assets, 45% are tokens, 6% are memecoins and 1% are NFT collections.
| CoinSpectrum Grade | A · 72/100 · provisional |
|---|---|
| Rank among cryptocurrencies | #63 |
| Rank counting claims | #322 |
| Market capitalisation | $74M |
| Price | $0.0684 |
| Circulating supply | 1,082,846,880 KAVA |
| Maximum supply | no fixed cap |
| Consensus family | Proof of Stake |
| Consensus mechanism | Tendermint (CometBFT) |
| Network purpose | Financial ledger |
| Ledger type | Multi-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 — 72 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 65 to 74 (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 | 7.5 | the supply scale times 0.9, and a point for a fixed cap that holds |
| Supply (21 million scores 10) | 8.3 | no fixed maximum; 1.08 billion in circulation |
| Distribution | 9.6 | average of 3 parts |
| Holder concentration (Source) | – | Not yet measured |
| Active addresses | – | Not yet measured |
| Premine (allocated at launch) | 9.1 | 9.2% of today's supply allocated at launch to founders, a company, a foundation or investors. Genesis supply of about 100M KAVA (derived: the Binance IEO sold 6.52% of total supply for $3M at $0.46, which implies 100M) against today's fixed total supply of 1,082,846,885 KAVA (CoinGecko, 2026-10-23). source |
| Fundraising (share sold) (Source) | 9.6 | Sold by its issuer or insiders: 4.3% of supply sold. Three private sales sold ~30.05M ($0.075), 5.02M ($0.25) and 4.93M ($0.40) KAVA ($5.48M), and the October 2019 Binance Launchpad IEO sold 6.52M at $0.46, for ~46.52M. 46.52M / 1,082.85M total supply (CoinGecko, 2026-10-23) = 4.3%. $5.48M across three private token sales (backers include Ripple and Arrington XRP Capital), then a Binance Launchpad IEO in October 2019 for 6.52% of supply at $0.46 (about $3M). source |
| Developer share (after launch) | 10 | No developer share: every new coin goes to the miners or validators who produce blocks. Inflation has been zero since 1 Jan 2024 (Kava 15), and community_tax is now 0. Before that, the community pool took a large share. Proposal 78 (Mar 2022) raised minimum inflation from 20% to 100%, with 62.5% of block rewards going to developers via the community pool (Kava Rise), and Everstake cites a 94.5% community tax before 2024. Supply grew from about 100M at genesis to the current fixed 1,082.8M, so pool-bound issuance may be a large share of supply, but the minted amounts and dates are not established. source |
| Decentralisation | 5 | average of 3 parts |
| Governance (Source) | 10 | No authority can halt the chain or freeze funds: No protocol-level freeze or blacklist of ordinary KAVA balances. source |
| No central team (Source) | 0 | A central team directs it: The Kava node is developed by Kava Labs in its repository. source |
| Who can mint (Source) | 5 | Gated by stake rank: only a capped set of the largest stakes produces blocks |
| Nodes (Source) | – | Not yet counted |
| Security | 6.7 | 5.4 of 8 points source |
| Pool diversity (Largest pool 50% 0 to 20% 10, largest three 90% 0 to 50% 10; 2 points) | 9.3 | largest 23.95%, largest three 47.99% |
| Network activity (Transactions a day, 250 0, 500,000 or more 10; 2 points) | 3.6 | about 3,936 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 Jan 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 $0.0000015 |
| Throughput (2,478 a second, the busiest network's peak day, 10; 121, the median of the ten busiest, 5) | 5.5 | about 167 simple transactions a second |
| Block time (10 minutes 10, less either side) | 2.7 | a block every 5.71 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) | 9.8 | 0.2 MB limit, 21 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) | ✗ | CometBFT single-block finality, but blocks average about 5.7 s. |
| 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. |
| 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 key can hold and send KAVA; the Cosmos SDK bank and auth modules 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. |
| Hidden parties (Sender and receiver hidden) | 0 | No sender or receiver hiding. |
| Network privacy (Origin hidden by default) | 0 | CometBFT gossip relays transactions directly. |
| Programmability | 10 | 9 of 9 points source |
| Token issuance (At protocol level) | 2 | ERC-20 contracts on the Kava EVM co-chain, which runs inside the same Kava chain and validator set, open to any account. |
| Smart contracts (General-purpose) | 2 | The Kava EVM, part of the Kava chain and its validator set, open to any account. |
| Multisig and time locks (Without a third party) | ✓ | Native Cosmos SDK multisig accounts plus timelock contracts on the EVM. |
| Atomic swaps (With other chains) | ✓ | EVM HTLC contracts (hash lock plus timelock refund). |
| Native DEX (Trades the coin itself, not a claim) | ✓ | Traded as itself, not as a wrapped token or a claim: an exchange in its own protocol (The x/swap module (Kava Swap) runs AMM pools such as BNB/USDX and BTCB/USDX in the chain itself, still holding liquidity); its own chain's DEXes (Kava, DefiLlama). |
| Cross-chain messaging (Verified by the chain itself) | ✓ | IBC (ibc-go v7) light-client channels (163). |
| NFTs (Carried by the chain's rules) | ✓ | ERC-721 contracts on the Kava EVM. |
| Demand | 6.3 | average of 7 measures |
| Exchanges (10 or more: 10) | 10 | 29 exchanges |
| Daily volume ($10K 0, $1B or more 10) | 4.5 | $1,220,090 traded in 24 hours; #441 by volume on the exchanges the site reads (scored on the median day of the last 30, $1,839,005) |
| Turnover (volume ÷ market cap, 5% a day: 10) | 8.3 | 2.4% of its market cap a day, median of the last 30 days |
| Order-book depth (±2% of the price ÷ market cap, 1%: 10) | 9.6 | $562,122 within 2% of the price on 8 exchanges, 0.76% of its market cap, median of the last 15 days |
| Market cap ($1M 0, $10B or more 10) | 4.7 | $74M, 4.7 on a scale of 2.5 points per tenfold |
| Paper trading (futures, options and margin ÷ market cap, 0%: 10, 100%: 0) | 6 | futures, options and margin positions 16% of its market cap |
| 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 | average of 3 criteria |
| Age (years since genesis) (Source) | 7 | 7 full years since 2019-10-25, the first day with a recorded price (genesis not yet researched, so the age can only be understated). |
| Development (work, fixes, vulnerabilities) | 4 | 1 positive, 2 negative, 1 not yet researched source |
| Positive | ||
| Steady work, 6 of 6 | ✓ | 3 commits in 2 of the last 12 months (github.com/Kava-Labs/kava); kava v0.28.2, released 2026-01-23 (v0.27.0, v0.27.1, v0.28.0, v0.28.1 also in window). |
| Negative | ||
| Unfixed vulnerability, disclosed 2025-02-27, −1 | ✗ | ibc-go ASA-2025-004 (GHSA-jg6f-48ff-5xrw, Critical) lets anyone who opens an IBC channel halt the chain through non-deterministic acknowledgement JSON; Kava v0.28.2 uses ibc-go v7.7.0, without the fix (v7.9.2 / v8.6.1). github.com github.com github.com |
| Unfixed vulnerability, disclosed 2025-03-12, −1 | ✗ | ibc-go ISA-2025-001 (GHSA-4wf3-5qj9-368v, High) extends the same acknowledgement chain-halt to all IBC apps; Kava v0.28.2 uses ibc-go v7.7.0, without the fix (v7.10.0 / v8.7.0). github.com github.com github.com |
| Not yet researched | ||
| Shipped a security fix 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 Stake coins
Ethereum ETHA+
BNB BNBA
Solana SOLA+
MultiversX EGLDA
dYdX DYDXA
Qtum QTUMA
Pharos PROSAAll 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
1,082,846,880 KAVA are in circulation, against no fixed cap — issuance has no defined end.
Launch and allocation
| Premine (allocated at launch) | 9.2% of today's supply |
|---|---|
| Sold by the issuer or insiders | 4.3% of today's supply |
| Developer share of new coins today | 0% |
| Fundraising | Private or venture funding |
Genesis supply of about 100M KAVA (derived: the Binance IEO sold 6.52% of total supply for $3M at $0.46, which implies 100M) against today's fixed total supply of 1,082,846,885 KAVA (CoinGecko, 2026-10-23).
$5.48M across three private token sales (backers include Ripple and Arrington XRP Capital), then a Binance Launchpad IEO in October 2019 for 6.52% of supply at $0.46 (about $3M).
Three private sales sold ~30.05M ($0.075), 5.02M ($0.25) and 4.93M ($0.40) KAVA ($5.48M), and the October 2019 Binance Launchpad IEO sold 6.52M at $0.46, for ~46.52M. 46.52M / 1,082.85M total supply (CoinGecko, 2026-10-23) = 4.3%.
Inflation has been zero since 1 Jan 2024 (Kava 15), and community_tax is now 0. Before that, the community pool took a large share. Proposal 78 (Mar 2022) raised minimum inflation from 20% to 100%, with 62.5% of block rewards going to developers via the community pool (Kava Rise), and Everstake cites a 94.5% community tax before 2024. Supply grew from about 100M at genesis to the current fixed 1,082.8M, so pool-bound issuance may be a large share of supply, but the minted amounts and dates are not established.
Sources: binance.com · icodrops.com · coincarp.com · kava.io · kava.io · everstake.com. Researched 2026-10-24, medium confidence.
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 Kava
Kava is #63 among cryptocurrencies and #322 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 259 places between Kava'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 Kava →