Symbol ranks #127 of 504 cryptocurrencies. On a list that also counts tokens, memecoins, wrapped coins, staked derivatives and stablecoins it appears at #744: 617 of the 743 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 976 non-native assets CoinSpectrum lists above it by market cap, about 66% are tokens, 25% are claims on other assets and 9% are memecoins.
| CoinSpectrum Grade | B · 69/100 · provisional, C to B |
|---|---|
| Rank among cryptocurrencies | #127 |
| Rank counting claims | #744 |
| Market capitalisation | $17M |
| Price | $0.00258 |
| Circulating supply | 6,549,380,167 XYM |
| Maximum supply | 8,999,999,999 XYM |
| Consensus family | Proof of Stake |
| Consensus mechanism | PoS+ (Symbol) |
| Ledger type | Single-asset ledger |
| Launch distribution | Premine |
Market figures from the 28 October 2026 build. Open the live view for every exchange's price, and charts.
B — 69 out of 100, provisional (from 17 of 20 criteria, 28 October 2026 build). With what is not yet measured anywhere from nothing to full marks, the score would be 58 to 73 (C to B).
| Criterion | Score | Basis |
|---|---|---|
| Leading Consensus Mechanisms (Source) | 9.1 | group average |
| Consensus: leader ladder | 9.1 | Proof of stake: 9.1 of 10 on the ladder of consensus families ranked by their largest chain's market cap |
| Consensus: family ladder | 9.1 | Proof of stake: 9.1 of 10 on the ladder of families ranked by the combined market cap of their chains |
| Cryptocurrency Standards (Source) | 6.9 | group average, 9 of 12 measured |
| Sound Money Properties (6 checks) (Source) | 9.7 | 5.8 of 6 points source |
| Scarcity (Limited supply · 1 Store of value · Whitepaper §6) | 8.3 | fixed maximum supply of 9 billion: supply scale 6.5, cap 10 |
| Durability (Sustainability · 1 Store of value) | ✓ | 5 full years since its first recorded price, no halt, freeze or reversal in five years |
| Fungibility (Interchangeability · 3 Unit of account) | ✓ | every unit identical and worth any other |
| Portability (Scalability · 2 Medium of exchange) | ✓ | typical fee $0.000045; about 200 transactions a second, 5.9 on the throughput scale (5 is the busiest networks' median demand) |
| Divisibility (Flexibility · 3 Unit of account) | ✓ | 6 decimal places, the smallest unit worth $2.6e-9 |
| Verifiability (Authenticity check · 1 Store of value · Whitepaper §8) | ✓ | node software open source; light clients verify from headers or proofs |
| Scalability (fees, throughput, block time, block space, features) | 6.6 | average of 4 parts source |
| Fees ($0.001 or less 10, $1 or more 0) | 10 | typical fee $0.000045 |
| Throughput (2,478 a second, the busiest network's peak day, 10; 119, the median of the ten busiest, 5) | 5.9 | about 200 simple transactions a second |
| Block time (10 minutes 10, less either side) | 5.3 | a block every 29.9 seconds |
| Block space per 10 minutes (32 MB or more 10) | – | no fixed byte limit (gas, compute units or mass instead), left out |
| Features (3 checks) | 5 | 1 of 2 passed, 1 not yet researched |
| Fast payments (Safe to accept within seconds · Whitepaper §11) | ✗ | Blocks are 30 seconds apart, and finalisation by voting nodes trails the head by tens of blocks. |
| Pruned nodes (Old history dropped, every rule checked · Whitepaper §7) | – | Not established. |
| Light clients (Payments verified from headers · Whitepaper §8) | ✓ | Symbol block headers commit transactions and receipts in Merkle trees so light clients can verify inclusion, with finalization by voting nodes. |
| Security (miner pay and 7 checks) | 4 | 4 of 9 points source |
| Miner pay (A day, $1,000 0 to $10 million 10; 2 points) | 0 | not mined |
| Own hashrate (Half its algorithm's largest, not merge-mined) | ✗ | not mined |
| Largest pool (Pool or validator under 50%) | ✓ | 20.4% |
| Largest three (Under 75% together) | ✓ | 42.1% |
| Clients (More than one maintained) | ✗ | 1 |
| Open source (Node software) | ✓ | catapult-client (LGPL-3.0) is maintained in the symbol GitHub organisation by a two-person core team that came from the now-defunct NEM Group; whether any organisation still controls it is not established. |
| Real use (1,000+ transactions a day) | ✗ | about 209 a day |
| No 51% attack (Nor a deep reorganisation, five years) | ✓ | |
| Decentralisation | 7.9 | section average, 5 of 8 measured |
| Censorship resistant (Source) | 10 | No authority can halt the chain or freeze funds: Mosaics can be issued as revokable, but native XYM cannot be frozen or clawed back. source |
| No central team (Source) | — | Not yet researched |
| Who can mint (Source) | 8.6 | Proof of stake: 8.6 of 10 on the ladder of who produces blocks |
| Nodes (Source) | — | Not yet counted |
| Holder concentration (Source) | — | Not yet measured |
| Premine (allocated at launch) | 0.8 | 91.6% of today's supply allocated at launch to founders, a company, a foundation or investors. Genesis supply of 7,842,928,625 XYM (initialCurrencyAtomicUnits), allocated to opted-in NEM holders and NEM Group/foundation-held balances, against the current 8,566,728,418 XYM total = 91.6%. The 5% harvest-network share is now scored separately as a block-reward cut. source |
| Fundraising | 10 | No sale of the coin source |
| Developer share (after launch) | 10 | Developer share: about 0.4% of today's supply received so far; 5% of each new block reward goes to them today. Network property harvestNetworkPercentage = 5 sends 5% of every harvest reward to the network sink address (NAVORTEX3IPBAUWQBBI3I3BDIOS4AVHPZLCFC7Y, formerly NBUTOBVT...), controlled by NEM Group/the Symbol foundation. The beneficiary (node) share of 25% pays node operators and is not counted. Inflation issued since genesis is 8,566.7M - 7,842.9M = 723.8M; 5% of that is ~36.2M, or 0.42% of supply. source |
| Privacy | 2 | section average |
| Privacy (5 checks) | 2 | 1 of 5 passed source |
| Protocol level privacy (Keys not tied to an identity · Whitepaper §10) | ✓ | Anyone can create keys and receive and send coins; the protocol carries no identity check. |
| UTXO ledger (A new key for each payment · Whitepaper §2, §9) | ✗ | |
| Network privacy (Origin hidden by default) | ✗ | catapult nodes relay transactions directly; no Dandelion or built-in Tor. |
| Hidden amounts (Amounts confidential) | ✗ | Transfers are public. |
| Hidden parties (Sender and receiver hidden) | ✗ | Accounts are public. |
| Programmability (tokens, contracts, 5 checks) | 5.6 | 5 of 9 points source |
| Token issuance (At protocol level) | 2 | Native mosaics: any account can define and mint a mosaic for a rental fee. |
| Smart contracts | 0 | Fixed transaction types (aggregate, multisig, secret lock and proof, mosaic, namespace, metadata) with no user-programmable contracts. |
| Multisig and time locks (Without a third party) | ✓ | Native M-of-N multisig accounts (up to 25 cosignatories, 3 nesting levels) and secret locks that expire after a set duration. |
| Atomic swaps (With other chains) | ✓ | SecretLockTransaction and SecretProofTransaction implement HTLC cross-chain swaps in the protocol. |
| Native exchange (Built into the protocol) | ✗ | No exchange in the protocol. |
| Cross-chain messaging (Verified by the chain itself) | ✗ | No protocol-verified cross-chain messaging; cross-chain swaps rely on HTLCs. |
| NFTs (Carried by the chain's rules) | ✓ | Native mosaics can be created with supply 1, divisibility 0 and a fixed supply, which is how Symbol NFTs are made. |
| Supply & Demand | 4.7 | group average |
| Supply & Demand (Source) | 2.9 | average of 6 measures |
| Exchanges (10 or more: 10) | 2 | 2 exchanges |
| Daily volume ($10K 0, $1B or more 10) | 0.7 | $6,593 traded in 24 hours; #2308 by volume on the exchanges the site reads (scored on the median day of the last 30, $22,062) |
| Turnover (volume ÷ market cap, 5% a day: 10) | 1.4 | 0.12% of its market cap a day, median of the last 30 days |
| Order-book depth (bids and asks within 2% ÷ market cap, 1%: 10) | 0.1 | $179 within 2% of the price on 1 exchange, 0.00% of its market cap, median of the last 2 days |
| Market cap ($1M 0, $10B or more 10) | 3.1 | $17M, 3.1 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 |
| Supply (smaller is better) | 6.5 | fixed maximum supply of 9 billion |
| Record | 7.3 | group average |
| Record (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 | ✓ | |
| Age (years since genesis) (Source) | 5 | 5 full years since 2021-03-17, the first day with a recorded price (genesis not yet researched, so the age can only be understated). |
| Development (work, improvements, unfixed issues) | 7 | 2 positive, 0 negative source |
| Positive | ||
| Steady work, 6 of 6 | ✓ | 855 commits in 12 of the last 12 months (github.com/symbol/product); Catapult client 1.0.3.8 (2025-04-04) and 1.0.3.9 (2025-09-22) are the only releases in 24 months; mainnet nodes report 1.0.3.9. |
| Shipped a security fix in two years, +1 | ✓ | Catapult client v1.0.3.9 (Sep 2025, breaking fork): fixed an aggregate-transaction hash bug that could produce non-unique hashes. |
Twenty criteria, weighted equally. The Cryptocurrency Standards have five sections: sound money (six qualities: scarcity, durability, fungibility, portability, divisibility, verifiability), scalability (four measures and three features), security (miner pay and seven checks), decentralisation (censorship resistance, no central team, who can mint, nodes, holders, premine, fundraising and developer share) and privacy (five checks); programmability (token issuance, smart contracts and five checks) follows them. Provisional: criteria 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.
6,549,380,167 of a maximum 8,999,999,999 XYM are in circulation — 72.8% of the total that will ever exist.
| Premine (allocated at launch) | 91.6% of today's supply |
|---|---|
| Developer share received since launch | 0.4% of today's supply |
| Developer share of new coins today | 5% |
| Fundraising | No sale and no investor round |
Genesis supply of 7,842,928,625 XYM (initialCurrencyAtomicUnits), allocated to opted-in NEM holders and NEM Group/foundation-held balances, against the current 8,566,728,418 XYM total = 91.6%. The 5% harvest-network share is now scored separately as a block-reward cut.
Symbol itself held no sale. Its genesis mirrored XEM balances, so it inherits NEM's 2014-15 stake sale (see XEM).
Network property harvestNetworkPercentage = 5 sends 5% of every harvest reward to the network sink address (NAVORTEX3IPBAUWQBBI3I3BDIOS4AVHPZLCFC7Y, formerly NBUTOBVT...), controlled by NEM Group/the Symbol foundation. The beneficiary (node) share of 25% pays node operators and is not counted. Inflation issued since genesis is 8,566.7M - 7,842.9M = 723.8M; 5% of that is ~36.2M, or 0.42% of supply.
Contradicts the current 'presale' label. Symbol did not sell coins; its genesis was a founder-decided airdrop to XEM holders. It is ~92% premined, but the money was raised (minimally) by NEM in 2014. soldPct is left null because XEM's sale can't cleanly be mapped onto opted-in XYM balances. The node list on symbol.services is stale (last check October 2025), so nodes are null.
Sources: sym-main-01.opening-line.jp:3000 · docs.symbol.dev · xym7.allnodes.me:3001 · xym7.allnodes.me:3001 · docs.symbol.dev · forum.nem.io. Researched 2026-10-24, high confidence.
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.
Symbol is #127 among cryptocurrencies and #744 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 617 places between Symbol'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).