Polkadot (DOT)
Polkadot ranks #23 of 484 cryptocurrencies. On a list that also counts tokens, memecoins, wrapped coins, staked derivatives and stablecoins it appears at #59: 36 of the 58 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 45 non-native assets CoinSpectrum lists above it by market cap, about 62% are claims on other assets, 29% are tokens and 9% are memecoins.
| CoinSpectrum Grade | A · 72/100 · provisional, A to A+ |
|---|---|
| Rank among cryptocurrencies | #23 |
| Rank counting claims | #59 |
| Market capitalisation | $1.4B |
| Price | $0.8420 |
| Circulating supply | 1,711,478,374 DOT |
| Maximum supply | 2,100,000,000 DOT |
| Consensus family | Proof of Stake |
| Consensus mechanism | NPoS (BABE + GRANDPA) |
| Network purpose | Interoperability hub |
| Ledger type | Multi-asset ledger |
| Launch distribution | Presale |
| Regulatory class | Commodity |
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 76 (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 | 7.2 | the supply scale times 0.9, and a point for a fixed cap that holds |
| Supply (21 million scores 10) | 8 | fixed maximum supply of 2.1 billion |
| Distribution | 6.7 | average of 3 parts |
| Holder concentration (Source) | – | Not yet measured |
| Active addresses | – | Not yet measured |
| Premine (allocated at launch) | 4.2 | 58.5% of today's supply allocated at launch to founders, a company, a foundation or investors. Genesis was 10M DOT (1B after the 2020 100x redenomination: 50% 2017 sale, 30% Web3 Foundation, 20% held for later sales), against ~1.709B current total supply (CoinGecko, 2026-10-23). source |
| Fundraising (share sold) (Source) | 6.6 | Sold by its issuer or insiders: 34.2% of supply sold. Oct 2017 public sale of 5M pre-redenomination DOT (500M DOT), June 2019 private sale of 500,000 (50M DOT) and July 2020 auction of ~346,400 ($43.3M at $125, i.e. ~3.4%; 34.6M DOT) = ~584.6M DOT, including the Parity-multisig-frozen portion because it was sold. 584.6M / ~1.709B current total supply (CoinGecko, 2026-10-23) = 34.2%. Oct 2017 public sale of 50% (reported ~$145M; much later frozen by the Parity multisig bug), a 2019 private sale of 500,000 pre-redenomination DOT (5%) at a ~$1.2B valuation, and a 2020 sale of 3.4%; the remainder of the 20% reserve is retained for future fundraising. source |
| Developer share (after launch) | 9.2 | Developer share: about 8% of today's supply received so far; 32.2% of each new block reward goes to them today. Before Nov 2024, inflation was ~10% a year, and the treasury received whatever stakers did not, which averaged about 20% of issuance. Ref 1139 then fixed issuance at 120M DOT a year, 15% to the treasury. Ref 1710 cut that to ~55.8M a year from 14 Mar 2026, and Ref 1909 (2026) now splits it 45.2% stakers, 22.6% validator self-stake incentive and 32.2% to a governance-controlled buffer in the Dynamic Allocation Pool. Estimate: ~0.2 x ~510M (2020-24) + 0.15 x ~160M + ~7M (2026) = ~140M of ~1.709B, about 8%. The pre-2024 average is approximate, so the figure is rough (range ~6-10%). source |
| Decentralisation | 5.7 | average of 3 parts |
| Governance (Source) | 10 | No authority can halt the chain or freeze funds: Only a public OpenGov root referendum could move or freeze funds; no single party holds that power and no deliberate halts are recorded. source |
| No central team (Source) | 0 | A central team directs it: Parity Technologies maintains polkadot-sdk and employs most core developers; runtime upgrades go through OpenGov and the Polkadot Fellowship. source |
| Who can mint (Source) | 7 | Gated by stake: any holder with enough stake can validate: access bought with coins |
| Nodes (Source) | – | Not yet counted |
| Security | 6.3 | 3.8 of 6 points, 2 not yet measured source |
| Pool diversity (Largest pool 50% 0 to 20% 10, largest three 90% 0 to 50% 10; 2 points) | – | |
| Network activity (Transactions a day, 250 0, 500,000 or more 10; 2 points) | 4.7 | about 8,600 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) | 7.5 | polkadot-sdk (Rust, Parity, Nov 2026); KAGOME (C++, Qdrvm) is in development, v1.0.0-rc3, Apr 2025; Gossamer (Go) has had no release since Mar 2024: one client 7, a second in development 0.5 |
| Open source (Node software) | ✓ | |
| No 51% attack (Nor a deep reorganisation, five years) | ✓ | |
| Scalability | 6.9 | average of 4 parts source |
| Fees ($0.001 or less 10, $1 or more 0) | 9.4 | typical fee $0.0015 |
| Throughput (2,478 a second, the busiest network's peak day, 10; 121, the median of the ten busiest, 5) | 8.5 | about 1,000 simple transactions a second |
| Block time (10 minutes 10, less either side) | 2.8 | a block every 6 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) | – | not yet measured |
| Features (3 checks) | 6.7 | 2 of 3 passed |
| Fast payments (Safe to accept within seconds · Whitepaper abstract, §1, §2 and §11) | ✗ | GRANDPA finality typically lands 12-30 s after inclusion; 2 s Asset Hub blocks alone are not final. |
| Pruned nodes (Old history dropped, every rule checked · Whitepaper §7) | ✓ | polkadot nodes default to state pruning and support --blocks-pruning; archive mode is optional. |
| Light clients (Payments verified from headers · Whitepaper §8) | ✓ | smoldot light client (Substrate Connect) verifies GRANDPA finality proofs; production since 2022. |
| 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 sr25519/ed25519 key can hold and send DOT; the Substrate balances pallet carries 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 on the relay chain. |
| Hidden parties (Sender and receiver hidden) | 0 | No sender or receiver hiding. |
| Network privacy (Origin hidden by default) | 0 | Substrate gossip relays extrinsics directly; no Dandelion or Tor. |
| Programmability | 10 | 9 of 9 points source |
| Token issuance (At protocol level) | 2 | The Assets pallet on Polkadot Hub, where DOT balances, staking and governance live since the 4 November 2025 migration, lets any account issue tokens. |
| Smart contracts (General-purpose) | 2 | Since the Asset Hub migration of 4 November 2025, DOT balances, staking and governance live on Polkadot Hub, whose Revive layer (EVM and PVM contracts) went live on 27 January 2026. |
| Multisig and time locks (Without a third party) | ✓ | Native multisig accounts (signatories plus threshold) and timelock contracts on Polkadot Hub. |
| Atomic swaps (With other chains) | ✓ | EVM HTLC contracts can run on Polkadot Hub's Revive layer. |
| 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 Asset Conversion pallet on Asset Hub is an AMM in the runtime: liquidity pools against DOT and swaps, also used to pay fees in other assets); Chainflip. |
| Cross-chain messaging (Verified by the chain itself) | ✓ | XCM messages between the relay chain, system chains and parachains over XCMP/HRMP/VMP, under the relay chain's shared security. |
| NFTs (Carried by the chain's rules) | ✓ | NFT pallets (pallet-nfts/uniques) on Asset Hub. |
| Demand | 8 | average of 7 measures |
| Exchanges (10 or more: 10) | 10 | 44 exchanges |
| Daily volume ($10K 0, $1B or more 10) | 7.6 | $29,661,762 traded in 24 hours; #42 by volume on the exchanges the site reads (scored on the median day of the last 30, $62,755,079) |
| Turnover (volume ÷ market cap, 5% a day: 10) | 8.9 | 3.1% of its market cap a day, median of the last 30 days |
| Order-book depth (±2% of the price ÷ market cap, 1%: 10) | 8.6 | $5,332,510 within 2% of the price on 9 exchanges, 0.37% of its market cap, median of the last 15 days |
| Market cap ($1M 0, $10B or more 10) | 7.9 | $1.4B, 7.9 on a scale of 2.5 points per tenfold |
| Paper trading (futures, options and margin ÷ market cap, 0%: 10, 100%: 0) | 7.1 | futures, options and margin positions 8.6% of its market cap |
| Wallet support (wallets that hold it, 10 or more: 10) | 6 | 6 wallets in the site's wallet directory |
| Record | 8.3 | average of 3 criteria |
| Age (years since genesis) (Source) | 6 | 6 full years since 2020-07-16, the first day with a recorded price (genesis not yet researched, so the age can only be understated). |
| Development (work, fixes, vulnerabilities) | 9 | 4 positive, 0 negative source |
| Positive | ||
| Steady work, 6 of 6 | ✓ | 11,737 commits in 12 of the last 12 months (github.com/paritytech/polkadot-sdk); paritytech/polkadot-sdk polkadot-stable2609, 2026-10-12; 82 stable releases in 24 months. |
| Shipped a security fix in two years, +1 | ✓ | Polkadot SDK, May 2025: fixed the transaction-depth-limit vulnerability (PR #8750); fellowship runtime v2.0.1 upgrade for a security issue. |
| Shipped a scaling upgrade in two years, +1 | ✓ | Runtime v2.0.0, Nov 2025: completed Polkadot 2.0 (async backing, agile coretime, elastic scaling) and moved balances to Asset Hub. |
| Shipped a new capability for users in two years, +1 | ✓ | Polkadot Hub, 27 Jan 2026: native EVM/PVM smart contracts. |
| 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+
Hedera HBARA
Cronos CROA
KuCoin KCSB
Algorand ALGOAAll 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
1,711,478,374 of a maximum 2,100,000,000 DOT are in circulation — 81.5% of the total that will ever exist.
Launch and allocation
| Premine (allocated at launch) | 58.5% of today's supply |
|---|---|
| Sold by the issuer or insiders | 34.2% of today's supply |
| Developer share received since launch | 8% of today's supply |
| Developer share of new coins today | 32.2% |
| Fundraising | Private or venture funding |
Genesis was 10M DOT (1B after the 2020 100x redenomination: 50% 2017 sale, 30% Web3 Foundation, 20% held for later sales), against ~1.709B current total supply (CoinGecko, 2026-10-23).
Oct 2017 public sale of 50% (reported ~$145M; much later frozen by the Parity multisig bug), a 2019 private sale of 500,000 pre-redenomination DOT (5%) at a ~$1.2B valuation, and a 2020 sale of 3.4%; the remainder of the 20% reserve is retained for future fundraising.
Oct 2017 public sale of 5M pre-redenomination DOT (500M DOT), June 2019 private sale of 500,000 (50M DOT) and July 2020 auction of ~346,400 ($43.3M at $125, i.e. ~3.4%; 34.6M DOT) = ~584.6M DOT, including the Parity-multisig-frozen portion because it was sold. 584.6M / ~1.709B current total supply (CoinGecko, 2026-10-23) = 34.2%.
Before Nov 2024, inflation was ~10% a year, and the treasury received whatever stakers did not, which averaged about 20% of issuance. Ref 1139 then fixed issuance at 120M DOT a year, 15% to the treasury. Ref 1710 cut that to ~55.8M a year from 14 Mar 2026, and Ref 1909 (2026) now splits it 45.2% stakers, 22.6% validator self-stake incentive and 32.2% to a governance-controlled buffer in the Dynamic Allocation Pool. Estimate: ~0.2 x ~510M (2020-24) + 0.15 x ~160M + ~7M (2026) = ~140M of ~1.709B, about 8%. The pre-2024 average is approximate, so the figure is rough (range ~6-10%).
Sources: theblock.co · theblock.co · coingecko.com · wiki.polkadot.com · polkadot.polkassembly.io · forum.polkadot.network. Researched 2026-10-24, medium confidence.
What a regulator has said
Named a digital commodity in the joint SEC-CFTC interpretation (Mar 17, 2026).
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 Polkadot
Polkadot is #23 among cryptocurrencies and #59 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 36 places between Polkadot'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).