Sonic (S)
Sonic ranks #55 of 484 cryptocurrencies. On a list that also counts tokens, memecoins, wrapped coins, staked derivatives and stablecoins it appears at #203: 148 of the 202 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 204 non-native assets CoinSpectrum lists above it by market cap, about 51% are claims on other assets, 42% are tokens, 6% are memecoins and under 1% are NFT collections.
| CoinSpectrum Grade | A · 68/100 · provisional |
|---|---|
| Rank among cryptocurrencies | #55 |
| Rank counting claims | #203 |
| Market capitalisation | $142M |
| Price | $0.0365 |
| Circulating supply | 3,885,497,663 S |
| Maximum supply | no fixed cap |
| Consensus family | Proof of Stake |
| Consensus mechanism | Lachesis (aBFT) |
| Network purpose | Smart-contract platform |
| 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 — 68 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 63 to 72 (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 | 6.9 | the supply scale times 0.9, and a point for a fixed cap that holds |
| Supply (21 million scores 10) | 7.7 | no fixed maximum; 3.89 billion in circulation |
| Distribution | 5.6 | average of 3 parts |
| Holder concentration (Source) | – | Not yet measured |
| Active addresses | – | Not yet measured |
| Premine (allocated at launch) | 0.3 | 97.5% of today's supply allocated at launch to founders, a company, a foundation or investors. All S apart from the scheduled ecosystem mint was issuer-created: 3.175B issued 1:1 for FTM (whose whole supply, including the block-reward reserve now paying validators, was allocated by the Fantom Foundation), plus the 190.5M airdrop mint and the 472.4M governance mint (Sep 2025). Only the ~95M of yearly ecosystem mints is now scored as a block-reward cut: (3.885B − 0.095B) / 3.885B ≈ 97.5%. source |
| Fundraising (share sold) (Source) | 6.8 | Sold by its issuer or insiders: 32.2% of supply sold. Fantom's 2018 seed, private and public sales sold ~1.23-1.27B FTM (38.9-40% of 3.175B; ~$39.65M), carried 1:1 into S at the Sonic migration. ~1.25B / 3,885,497,663 S (CoinGecko total, 2026-10-24) = 32.2% (range 31.7-32.7%); any 2025 sales from the governance mint are not established and are excluded. Fantom's 2018 token sale sold about 40% of 3.175B FTM for about $39.65M across private and public rounds (CoinCarp lists private rounds of $25M and $13M, a $2M ICO and a $1.6M seed); investors included Hyperchain Capital, Signum Capital, Arrington XRP Capital and Bibox Fund. source |
| Developer share (after launch) | 9.8 | Developer share: about 2.5% of today's supply received so far; 40.5% of each new block reward goes to them today. Validators are paid ~70M S a year from Fantom's reallocated block-reward reserve (no new mint for four years), while 47,625,000 S a year are minted for six years from 18 June 2025 into the ecosystem vault run by Sonic Labs, with unused tokens to be burned. That is 47.625 / (70 + 47.625) = 40.5% of today's reward stream. Two yearly mints so far ≈ 95.25M = 2.5% of ~3.885B (upper bound: burns of unused tokens not verified). The 190.5M airdrop mint and the 472.4M governance mint of 4 Sep 2025 are discretionary, so premine. source |
| Decentralisation | 4.3 | average of 3 parts |
| Governance (Source) | 10 | No authority can halt the chain or freeze funds: No protocol key can freeze native S; the SFC staking contract and network rules change through Sonic Labs upgrades, but no freeze or halt power is documented. source |
| No central team (Source) | 0 | A central team directs it: The sonic client (LGPL-3.0, 0xsoniclabs/sonic) is developed by Sonic Labs, which sets the protocol roadmap. source |
| Who can mint (Source) | 3 | Gated by representatives: witnesses or representatives chosen by weight confirm the ledger |
| Nodes (Source) | – | Not yet counted |
| Security | 8.1 | 6.5 of 8 points source |
| Pool diversity (Largest pool 50% 0 to 20% 10, largest three 90% 0 to 50% 10; 2 points) | 10 | largest 12.5%, largest three 29.5% |
| Network activity (Transactions a day, 250 0, 500,000 or more 10; 2 points) | 8.5 | about 160,000 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 Oct 2026 |
| Open source (Node software) | ✓ | |
| No 51% attack (Nor a deep reorganisation, five years) | ✓ | |
| Scalability | 5 | average of 3 parts source |
| Fees ($0.001 or less 10, $1 or more 0) | 10 | typical fee $0.00005 |
| Throughput (2,478 a second, the busiest network's peak day, 10; 121, the median of the ten busiest, 5) | – | not yet measured |
| Block time (10 minutes 10, less either side) | 0 | a block every 1 second |
| 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) | 5 | 1 of 2 passed, 1 not yet researched |
| Fast payments (Safe to accept within seconds · Whitepaper abstract, §1, §2 and §11) | ✓ | Lachesis aBFT finalises blocks in about a second, with no re-orgs after finality. |
| Pruned nodes (Old history dropped, every rule checked · Whitepaper §7) | – | Read-only and archive node modes exist; pruning of old blocks not documented in the sources checked. |
| 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 S; 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 | sonicd relays transactions directly. |
| Programmability | 10 | 9 of 9 points source |
| Token issuance (At protocol level) | 2 | ERC-20 contracts on its EVM, open to any account. |
| Smart contracts (General-purpose) | 2 | An EVM open to any account, with DEX and lending applications on mainnet. |
| 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: its own chain's DEXes (Sonic, DefiLlama). |
| Cross-chain messaging (Verified by the chain itself) | ✓ | The Sonic Gateway to Ethereum verifies Merkle proofs against state roots attested by Sonic's own validator set, with a 14-day fail-safe; a relay service carries the heartbeats. |
| NFTs (Carried by the chain's rules) | ✓ | ERC-721 contracts on the EVM. |
| Demand | 6.9 | average of 7 measures |
| Exchanges (10 or more: 10) | 10 | 43 exchanges |
| Daily volume ($10K 0, $1B or more 10) | 5.8 | $3,266,933 traded in 24 hours; #161 by volume on the exchanges the site reads (scored on the median day of the last 30, $7,850,671) |
| Turnover (volume ÷ market cap, 5% a day: 10) | 9.6 | 4.1% of its market cap a day, median of the last 30 days |
| Order-book depth (±2% of the price ÷ market cap, 1%: 10) | 9.4 | $948,528 within 2% of the price on 9 exchanges, 0.67% of its market cap, median of the last 15 days |
| Market cap ($1M 0, $10B or more 10) | 5.4 | $142M, 5.4 on a scale of 2.5 points per tenfold |
| Paper trading (futures, options and margin ÷ market cap, 0%: 10, 100%: 0) | 6.8 | futures, options and margin positions 10% 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 | 8.3 | average of 3 criteria |
| Age (years since genesis) (Source) | 7 | 7 full years since 2019-06-11, the first day with a recorded price (genesis not yet researched, so the age can only be understated). |
| Development (work, fixes, vulnerabilities) | 8 | 3 positive, 0 negative, 1 not yet researched source |
| Positive | ||
| Steady work, 6 of 6 | ✓ | 1,025 commits in 12 of the last 12 months (github.com/0xsoniclabs/sonic); sonic v2.2.5 released 2026-10-07 (v2.2.6-rc.3 2026-10-23). |
| Shipped a security fix in two years, +1 | ✓ | v2.1.2, Nov 2025: critical security improvements; v2.1.6, Mar 2026: CVE patches. |
| Shipped a new capability for users in two years, +1 | ✓ | v2.1.2 network upgrade, 3 Nov 2025: native fee subsidies and Pectra compatibility. |
| Not yet researched | ||
| Shipped a scaling upgrade 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+
Akash Network AKTA
IOTA IOTAA
Theta Network THETAA
Vaulta AAAll 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
3,885,497,663 S are in circulation, against no fixed cap — issuance has no defined end.
Launch and allocation
| Premine (allocated at launch) | 97.5% of today's supply |
|---|---|
| Sold by the issuer or insiders | 32.2% of today's supply |
| Developer share received since launch | 2.5% of today's supply |
| Developer share of new coins today | 40.5% |
| Fundraising | Private or venture funding |
All S apart from the scheduled ecosystem mint was issuer-created: 3.175B issued 1:1 for FTM (whose whole supply, including the block-reward reserve now paying validators, was allocated by the Fantom Foundation), plus the 190.5M airdrop mint and the 472.4M governance mint (Sep 2025). Only the ~95M of yearly ecosystem mints is now scored as a block-reward cut: (3.885B − 0.095B) / 3.885B ≈ 97.5%.
Fantom's 2018 token sale sold about 40% of 3.175B FTM for about $39.65M across private and public rounds (CoinCarp lists private rounds of $25M and $13M, a $2M ICO and a $1.6M seed); investors included Hyperchain Capital, Signum Capital, Arrington XRP Capital and Bibox Fund.
Fantom's 2018 seed, private and public sales sold ~1.23-1.27B FTM (38.9-40% of 3.175B; ~$39.65M), carried 1:1 into S at the Sonic migration. ~1.25B / 3,885,497,663 S (CoinGecko total, 2026-10-24) = 32.2% (range 31.7-32.7%); any 2025 sales from the governance mint are not established and are excluded.
Validators are paid ~70M S a year from Fantom's reallocated block-reward reserve (no new mint for four years), while 47,625,000 S a year are minted for six years from 18 June 2025 into the ecosystem vault run by Sonic Labs, with unused tokens to be burned. That is 47.625 / (70 + 47.625) = 40.5% of today's reward stream. Two yearly mints so far ≈ 95.25M = 2.5% of ~3.885B (upper bound: burns of unused tokens not verified). The 190.5M airdrop mint and the 472.4M governance mint of 4 Sep 2025 are discretionary, so premine.
Sources: icodrops.com · dropstab.com · forklog.com · coingecko.com · docs.soniclabs.com · theblock.co. 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 Sonic
Sonic is #55 among cryptocurrencies and #203 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 148 places between Sonic'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).