KuCoin (KCS)
KuCoin ranks #26 of 484 cryptocurrencies. On a list that also counts tokens, memecoins, wrapped coins, staked derivatives and stablecoins it appears at #73: 47 of the 72 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 61 non-native assets CoinSpectrum lists above it by market cap, about 57% are claims on other assets, 36% are tokens and 7% are memecoins.
| CoinSpectrum Grade | B · 60/100 · provisional, B to A |
|---|---|
| Rank among cryptocurrencies | #26 |
| Rank counting claims | #73 |
| Market capitalisation | $938M |
| Price | $6.71 |
| Circulating supply | 139,655,021 KCS |
| Maximum supply | no fixed cap |
| Consensus family | Proof of Stake |
| Consensus mechanism | PoSA (exchange chain) |
| Network purpose | Exchange chain |
| 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)
B — 60 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 56 to 65 (B 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 | 8.3 | the supply scale times 0.9, and a point for a fixed cap that holds |
| Supply (21 million scores 10) | 9.2 | no fixed maximum; 140 million in circulation |
| Distribution | 3.6 | average of 3 parts |
| Holder concentration (Source) | – | Not yet measured |
| Active addresses | – | Not yet measured |
| Premine (allocated at launch) | 0 | 100% of today's supply allocated at launch to founders, a company, a foundation or investors. All 200M KCS were issued by KuCoin in 2017 (100M ICO, 70M founders, 30M angel investors). That is more than the current total supply of 142.16M KCS after buyback-and-burn (CoinGecko, 2026-10-23), so the figure is 100. source |
| Fundraising (share sold) (Source) | 0.9 | Sold by its issuer or insiders: 91.4% of supply sold. Public ICO 13 Aug-1 Sep 2017 sold 100M KCS at 0.000055 BTC (~5,500 BTC, ~$20M) plus 30M KCS to angel investors before the ICO = 130M sold (matching Dropstab's 130M). 130M / 142,155,021 KCS (CoinGecko total, 2026-10-24) = 91.4%. 30M KCS went to angel investors before the ICO. Public ICO 13 August to 1 September 2017 sold 100M KCS at 0.000055 BTC each, about $20M (ByteTree, altFINS). One aggregator (Dropstab) reports $45M and 130M KCS, which conflicts. source |
| Developer share (after launch) | 10 | No developer share: every new coin goes to the miners or validators who produce blocks. No cut and no new issuance: KCS has a fixed, fully pre-issued supply reduced by buyback-and-burn; KCC validators are paid from fees, not minted rewards. source |
| Decentralisation | 4.7 | average of 3 parts |
| Governance (Source) | 10 | No authority can halt the chain or freeze funds: KCC is a geth-derived PoSA chain with no documented protocol-level freeze or clawback of native KCS. source |
| No central team (Source) | 0 | A central team directs it: KCC is a geth fork maintained in the kcc-community repository by the KuCoin-backed KCC GoDAO team. source |
| Who can mint (Source) | 4 | Gated by election: a delegated set voted in by holders produces blocks |
| Nodes (Source) | – | Not yet counted |
| Security | 5.2 | 4.1 of 8 points source |
| Pool diversity (Largest pool 50% 0 to 20% 10, largest three 90% 0 to 50% 10; 2 points) | 2.8 | largest 33.3%, largest three 100% |
| Network activity (Transactions a day, 250 0, 500,000 or more 10; 2 points) | 4.3 | about 6,624 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) | 6 | one client, latest version Jul 2025, within 24 months |
| Open source (Node software) | ✓ | |
| No 51% attack (Nor a deep reorganisation, five years) | ✓ | |
| Scalability | 5.7 | average of 5 parts source |
| Fees ($0.001 or less 10, $1 or more 0) | 10 | typical fee $0.00047 |
| Throughput (2,478 a second, the busiest network's peak day, 10; 121, the median of the ten busiest, 5) | 6.6 | about 317 simple transactions a second |
| Block time (10 minutes 10, less either side) | 1.7 | a block every 3 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) | 10 | 1.25 MB limit (converted from its gas, compute, mass or count limit), 250 MB per 10 minutes |
| Features (3 checks) | 0 | 0 of 3 passed |
| Fast payments (Safe to accept within seconds · Whitepaper abstract, §1, §2 and §11) | ✗ | 3-second PoSA blocks with probabilistic confirmation; no fast-finality gadget. |
| Pruned nodes (Old history dropped, every rule checked · Whitepaper §7) | ✗ | geth-style gcmode full prunes state but keeps every block. |
| Light clients (Payments verified from headers · Whitepaper §8) | ✗ | No light-client protocol; wallets trust RPC servers. |
| 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 secp256k1 key can hold and send KCS; the chain's account and transfer rules 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 | KCC (geth fork) relays transactions directly. |
| Programmability | 8.9 | 8 of 9 points source |
| Token issuance (At protocol level) | 2 | KRC-20 (ERC-20) contracts on KuCoin Community Chain's EVM, where KCS is the gas token, open to any account. |
| Smart contracts (General-purpose) | 2 | KuCoin Community Chain (chain ID 321) runs an EVM used with Hardhat, Remix and Foundry, open to any account. |
| Multisig and time locks (Without a third party) | ✓ | Multisig and 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: Komodo DeFi. |
| Cross-chain messaging (Verified by the chain itself) | ✗ | No protocol messaging; the KCC bridge is a separately run service. |
| NFTs (Carried by the chain's rules) | ✓ | ERC-721 (KRC-721) contracts on the EVM. |
| Demand | 5 | average of 7 measures |
| Exchanges (10 or more: 10) | 7 | 7 exchanges |
| Daily volume ($10K 0, $1B or more 10) | 4.3 | $1,328,767 traded in 24 hours; #534 by volume on the exchanges the site reads (scored on the median day of the last 30, $1,378,049) |
| Turnover (volume ÷ market cap, 5% a day: 10) | 1.8 | 0.14% of its market cap a day, median of the last 30 days |
| Order-book depth (±2% of the price ÷ market cap, 1%: 10) | 3.7 | $120,735 within 2% of the price on 3 exchanges, 0.01% of its market cap, median of the last 15 days; a lower bound: the books returned by 1 of them stop short of 2% |
| Market cap ($1M 0, $10B or more 10) | 7.4 | $938M, 7.4 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 | 6.3 | average of 3 criteria |
| Age (years since genesis) (Source) | 9 | 9 full years since 2017-09-17, the first day with a recorded price (genesis not yet researched, so the age can only be understated). |
| Development (work, fixes, vulnerabilities) | 0 | 1 positive, 4 negative, 3 not yet researched source |
| Positive | ||
| Steady work, 2 of 6 | ✓ | 6 commits in 1 of the last 12 months (github.com/kcc-community/kcc); KCC client v1.4.8-stable, 2 Jul 2025; the only releases in the last 24 months were cut on 1-2 Jul 2025 (two stable, two unstable). |
| Negative | ||
| Unfixed vulnerability, disclosed 2023-09-06, −1 | ✗ | go-ethereum GHSA-ppjg-v974-84cm (CVE-2023-40591, High) lets a flood of p2p pings spawn unbounded goroutines until the node runs out of memory; KCC's current client kcc v1.4.8-stable (geth-1.10-era fork; the public RPC also reports v1.4.8) still answers pings in a new goroutine (fixed in 1.12.1). github.com raw.githubusercontent.com |
| Unfixed vulnerability, disclosed 2024-05-06, −1 | ✗ | go-ethereum GHSA-4xc9-8hmq-j652 (CVE-2024-32972, High) lets a GetBlockHeaders request with count 0 make the node load every header back to genesis; KCC's current client kcc v1.4.8-stable (geth-1.10-era fork; the public RPC also reports v1.4.8) lacks the 1.13.15 cap. github.com raw.githubusercontent.com |
| Unfixed vulnerability, disclosed 2026-01-13, −1 | ✗ | go-ethereum GHSA-mr7q-c9w9-wh4h (CVE-2026-22862, High) lets a crafted p2p message crash the node with a too-short ECIES ciphertext; KCC's current client kcc v1.4.8-stable (geth-1.10-era fork; the public RPC also reports v1.4.8) lacks the 1.16.8 length check. github.com raw.githubusercontent.com |
| Unfixed vulnerability, disclosed 2026-02-17, −1 | ✗ | go-ethereum GHSA-2gjw-fg97-vg3r (CVE-2026-26314, High) lets a crafted p2p message crash the node through unchecked secp256k1 point coordinates; KCC's current client kcc v1.4.8-stable (geth-1.10-era fork; the public RPC also reports v1.4.8) lacks the 1.16.9 coordinate check. github.com raw.githubusercontent.com raw.githubusercontent.com |
| Not yet researched | ||
| Shipped a security fix in two years | – | |
| Shipped a scaling upgrade in two years | – | |
| Shipped a new capability for users 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+
Cronos CROA
Polkadot DOTA
Algorand ALGOA
Injective INJAAll 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
139,655,021 KCS are in circulation, against no fixed cap — issuance has no defined end.
Launch and allocation
| Premine (allocated at launch) | 100% of today's supply |
|---|---|
| Sold by the issuer or insiders | 91.4% of today's supply |
| Developer share received since launch | 0% of today's supply |
| Developer share of new coins today | 0% |
| Fundraising | Public sale |
All 200M KCS were issued by KuCoin in 2017 (100M ICO, 70M founders, 30M angel investors). That is more than the current total supply of 142.16M KCS after buyback-and-burn (CoinGecko, 2026-10-23), so the figure is 100.
30M KCS went to angel investors before the ICO. Public ICO 13 August to 1 September 2017 sold 100M KCS at 0.000055 BTC each, about $20M (ByteTree, altFINS). One aggregator (Dropstab) reports $45M and 130M KCS, which conflicts.
Public ICO 13 Aug-1 Sep 2017 sold 100M KCS at 0.000055 BTC (~5,500 BTC, ~$20M) plus 30M KCS to angel investors before the ICO = 130M sold (matching Dropstab's 130M). 130M / 142,155,021 KCS (CoinGecko total, 2026-10-24) = 91.4%.
No cut and no new issuance: KCS has a fixed, fully pre-issued supply reduced by buyback-and-burn; KCC validators are paid from fees, not minted rewards.
Sources: bytetree.com · coincodex.com · cryptoast.fr · coingecko.com · kucoin.com · docs.kcc.io. 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 KuCoin
KuCoin is #26 among cryptocurrencies and #73 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 47 places between KuCoin'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).