Tezos (XTZ)
Tezos ranks #44 of 484 cryptocurrencies. On a list that also counts tokens, memecoins, wrapped coins, staked derivatives and stablecoins it appears at #138: 94 of the 137 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 133 non-native assets CoinSpectrum lists above it by market cap, about 56% are claims on other assets, 37% are tokens, 6% are memecoins and 1% are NFT collections.
| CoinSpectrum Grade | A+ · 76/100 · provisional, A to A+ |
|---|---|
| Rank among cryptocurrencies | #44 |
| Rank counting claims | #138 |
| Market capitalisation | $272M |
| Price | $0.2469 |
| Circulating supply | 1,101,076,749 XTZ |
| Maximum supply | no fixed cap |
| Consensus family | Proof of Stake |
| Consensus mechanism | Liquid PoS (Tenderbake) |
| Network purpose | Smart-contract platform |
| 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+ — 76 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 72 to 79 (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; 1.1 billion in circulation |
| Distribution | 5.9 | average of 3 parts |
| Holder concentration (Source) | – | Not yet measured |
| Active addresses | – | Not yet measured |
| Premine (allocated at launch) | 3.2 | 68.2% of today's supply allocated at launch to founders, a company, a foundation or investors. 763.3M XTZ created in the genesis block (607.49M fundraiser contributors, 3.16M early backers and contractors, 76.33M each to the Tezos Foundation and DLS), against ~1.1195B current total supply (CoinGecko total, 2026-10-23). source |
| Fundraising (share sold) (Source) | 4.6 | Sold by its issuer or insiders: 54.3% of supply sold. The July 2017 fundraiser delivered 607.49M XTZ to contributors at genesis; the 3.16M to early backers and contractors (undisclosed terms) and the Foundation and DLS allocations are not counted. 607.49M / ~1,119.5M total supply (CoinGecko, 2026-10-23) = 54.3%. July 2017 public fundraiser collected 65,681 BTC and 361,122 ETH (~$232M at the time); 3.16M XTZ went to 'early backers and contractors' on undisclosed terms. source |
| Developer share (after launch) | 10 | No developer share: every new coin goes to the miners or validators who produce blocks. Issuance (adaptive issuance since the Paris protocol, 2024) goes to bakers and stakers. The liquidity-baking subsidy sends a small slice of issuance to the Sirius tez/tzBTC DEX contract for its liquidity providers. That is not a developer, foundation or treasury, so it is not counted. Tezos has no protocol treasury. source |
| Decentralisation | 8.7 | average of 4 parts |
| Governance (Source) | 10 | No authority can halt the chain or freeze funds: No protocol-level freeze, blacklist or halt authority; protocol changes require on-chain governance votes. source |
| No central team (Source) | 10 | No central team: Octez is developed jointly by Nomadic Labs, TriliTech, Functori and other teams funded by the Tezos Foundation; protocol changes need on-chain baker votes. source |
| Who can mint (Source) | 7 | Gated by stake: any holder with enough stake can validate: access bought with coins |
| Nodes (Source) | 7.7 | 198 active validators or block producers (source: api.tzkt.io) |
| Security | 8.5 | 6.8 of 8 points source |
| Pool diversity (Largest pool 50% 0 to 20% 10, largest three 90% 0 to 50% 10; 2 points) | 10 | largest 13.84%, largest three 31.16% |
| Network activity (Transactions a day, 250 0, 500,000 or more 10; 2 points) | 9.9 | about 448,992 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 | 6.9 | average of 5 parts source |
| Fees ($0.001 or less 10, $1 or more 0) | 10 | typical fee $0.0001 |
| 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) | 10 | 0.524 MB limit, 52.4 MB per 10 minutes |
| Features (3 checks) | 3.3 | 1 of 3 passed |
| Fast payments (Safe to accept within seconds · Whitepaper abstract, §1, §2 and §11) | ✗ | Tenderbake finalises after two 6-second blocks, about 12 s. |
| Pruned nodes (Old history dropped, every rule checked · Whitepaper §7) | ✓ | Octez rolling history mode (the default) keeps only recent blocks and state; full mode drops old metadata. |
| Light clients (Payments verified from headers · Whitepaper §8) | ✗ | octez-client light mode cross-checks Merkle proofs from several endpoints it must choose; no finality-proof light client. |
| Privacy | 5.2 | 5.2 of 10: whitepaper privacy 3.5 of 7, extra features 1.7 of 3, 1 not yet researched source |
| Protocol level privacy (Keys not tied to an identity · Whitepaper §10) | 10 | Anyone can create keys and receive and send coins; the protocol 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) | 5 | Sapling shielded transactions in the protocol since Edo (Feb 2021); optional. Optional: 5 of 10. |
| Hidden parties (Sender and receiver hidden) | 5 | Sapling shielded pools hide sender and receiver; optional. Optional: 5 of 10. |
| Network privacy (Origin hidden by default) | 0 | Octez gossips operations directly. |
| Programmability | 8.9 | 8 of 9 points source |
| Token issuance (At protocol level) | 2 | FA1.2 and FA2 token contracts in Michelson, open to any account. |
| Smart contracts (General-purpose) | 2 | Michelson smart contracts deployable by any account, running DEXs and NFT markets on mainnet. |
| Multisig and time locks (Without a third party) | ✓ | Multisig contracts and timelock contracts (time checks and Michelson timelock opcodes). |
| Atomic swaps (With other chains) | ✓ | Michelson contracts can hold funds against a hash preimage with a time-based refund (HTLC). |
| 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 (Tezos, DefiLlama). |
| Cross-chain messaging (Verified by the chain itself) | ✗ | No protocol messaging to other chains; Etherlink is a rollup. |
| NFTs (Carried by the chain's rules) | ✓ | FA2 token contracts, which support non-fungible tokens. |
| Demand | 6.4 | average of 7 measures |
| Exchanges (10 or more: 10) | 10 | 39 exchanges |
| Daily volume ($10K 0, $1B or more 10) | 4.9 | $1,674,986 traded in 24 hours; #337 by volume on the exchanges the site reads (scored on the median day of the last 30, $2,675,857) |
| Turnover (volume ÷ market cap, 5% a day: 10) | 5.9 | 0.84% of its market cap a day, median of the last 30 days |
| Order-book depth (±2% of the price ÷ market cap, 1%: 10) | 8.3 | $827,771 within 2% of the price on 9 exchanges, 0.30% of its market cap, median of the last 15 days |
| Market cap ($1M 0, $10B or more 10) | 6.1 | $272M, 6.1 on a scale of 2.5 points per tenfold |
| Paper trading (futures, options and margin ÷ market cap, 0%: 10, 100%: 0) | 8.3 | futures, options and margin positions 3.0% 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 | 8.7 | average of 3 criteria |
| Age (years since genesis) (Source) | 9 | 9 full years since 2017-06-23, the first day with a recorded price (genesis not yet researched, so the age can only be understated). |
| Development (work, fixes, vulnerabilities) | 7 | 2 positive, 0 negative, 2 not yet researched source |
| Positive | ||
| Steady work, 6 of 6 | ✓ | 14,385 commits in 12 of the last 12 months (gitlab.com/tezos/tezos); Octez v25.3, released 2026-10-20. |
| Shipped a scaling upgrade in two years, +1 | ✓ | Tallinn, 24 Jan 2026: block time from 8 to 6 s and storage costs cut up to 100x. |
| Not yet researched | ||
| Shipped a security fix 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+
Celestia TIAA
Sei SEIA
Plasma XPLA
Terra Luna Classic LUNCAAll 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
1,101,076,749 XTZ are in circulation, against no fixed cap — issuance has no defined end.
Launch and allocation
| Premine (allocated at launch) | 68.2% of today's supply |
|---|---|
| Sold by the issuer or insiders | 54.3% of today's supply |
| Developer share received since launch | 0% of today's supply |
| Developer share of new coins today | 0% |
| Nodes or validators | 198 |
| Fundraising | Public sale |
763.3M XTZ created in the genesis block (607.49M fundraiser contributors, 3.16M early backers and contractors, 76.33M each to the Tezos Foundation and DLS), against ~1.1195B current total supply (CoinGecko total, 2026-10-23).
July 2017 public fundraiser collected 65,681 BTC and 361,122 ETH (~$232M at the time); 3.16M XTZ went to 'early backers and contractors' on undisclosed terms.
The July 2017 fundraiser delivered 607.49M XTZ to contributors at genesis; the 3.16M to early backers and contractors (undisclosed terms) and the Foundation and DLS allocations are not counted. 607.49M / ~1,119.5M total supply (CoinGecko, 2026-10-23) = 54.3%.
Issuance (adaptive issuance since the Paris protocol, 2024) goes to bakers and stakers. The liquidity-baking subsidy sends a small slice of issuance to the Sirius tez/tzBTC DEX contract for its liquidity providers. That is not a developer, foundation or treasury, so it is not counted. Tezos has no protocol treasury.
Sources: tezos.foundation · coingecko.com · tezos.gitlab.io · tezos.gitlab.io · tezos.foundation · coindesk.com. Researched 2026-10-24, high 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 Tezos
Tezos is #44 among cryptocurrencies and #138 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 94 places between Tezos'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 2 wrapped and staked claims on Tezos →