Zephyr Protocol (ZEPH)
Zephyr Protocol ranks #203 of 484 cryptocurrencies. On a list that also counts tokens, memecoins, wrapped coins, staked derivatives and stablecoins it appears at #1608: 1405 of the 1607 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 1889 non-native assets CoinSpectrum lists above it by market cap, about 61% are tokens, 33% are claims on other assets, 5% are memecoins and 1% are NFT collections.
| CoinSpectrum Grade | pending — launch under review |
|---|---|
| Rank among cryptocurrencies | #203 |
| Rank counting claims | #1608 |
| Market capitalisation | $2M |
| Price | $0.1503 |
| Circulating supply | 12,371,554 ZEPH |
| Maximum supply | no fixed cap |
| Consensus family | Proof of Work |
| Consensus mechanism | RandomX (CPU) |
| Own hashrate | — |
| Network purpose | Private payments |
| Ledger type | Single-asset ledger |
| Launch distribution | Premine |
Market figures from the 10 November 2026 build. Open the live view for every exchange's price, and charts.
CoinSpectrum Grade (Source)
Grade pending. What Zephyr Protocol pays its miners is not yet measured. A grade is not given until it is, so that a coin is never rated higher for what is not yet known.
| Section and criteria | Score | Basis |
|---|---|---|
| Consensus | 10 | average of 2 criteria |
| By leader (its largest chain's market cap) (Source) | 10 | Proof of work: 10 of 10 on the ladder of consensus families ranked by their largest chain's market cap |
| By family (all its chains' market cap) (Source) | 10 | Proof of work: 10 of 10 on the ladder of families ranked by the combined market cap of their chains |
| Supply | 8.6 | the supply scale times 0.9, and a point for a fixed cap that holds |
| Supply (21 million scores 10) | 9.5 | no fixed maximum; 12.4 million in circulation |
| Distribution | 9.3 | average of 3 parts |
| Holder concentration (Source) | – | Not yet measured |
| Active addresses | – | Not yet measured |
| Premine (allocated at launch) | 9.6 | 4.1% of today's supply allocated at launch to founders, a company, a foundation or investors. The genesis block paid 500,000 ZEPH to the team: ≈4.1% of the ~12.27M current supply. source |
| Fundraising (share sold) (Source) | 10 | No sale of the coin source |
| Developer share (after launch) | 8.2 | Developer share: about 17.8% of today's supply received so far; no share of new block rewards today. A one-off 1,921,650 ZEPH minted to a governance address at the V11 audit fork (block 536,000, June 2025) ≈15.7%, plus 5% of each block reward to a governance wallet until the V6 fork ≈2.1%: ≈17.8% of supply. source |
| Decentralisation | 3.3 | average of 3 parts |
| Governance (Source) | 0 | An authority can halt the chain or freeze funds: In 2025 the team's audit hard forks froze all ordinary transfers for about 11 weeks and invalidated any coins their holders did not audit in time. source |
| No central team (Source) | 0 | A central team directs it: The Zephyr Protocol team maintains the only node in the ZephyrProtocol/zephyr repository and decides hard forks, including the 2025 audit forks. source |
| Who can mint (Source) | 10 | Open to anyone with hardware: anyone can produce blocks by mining, no permission needed |
| Nodes (Source) | – | Not yet counted |
| Security | 5.6 | 2.8 of 5 points, 3 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) | 1.1 | about 576 transactions a day |
| Hashrate (Own work 5, its power 1 kW 0 to 10 GW 5; 1 point) | – | |
| 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 Jun 2025, within 24 months |
| Open source (Node software) | ✓ | |
| No 51% attack (Nor a deep reorganisation, five years) | ✓ | |
| Scalability | 6.4 | average of 5 parts, +1 for an adaptive block size source |
| Fees ($0.001 or less 10, $1 or more 0) | 10 | typical fee $0.00017 |
| Throughput (2,478 a second, the busiest network's peak day, 10; 121, the median of the ten busiest, 5) | 0 | about 2.2 simple transactions a second |
| Block time (10 minutes 10, less either side) | 7.5 | a block every 2 minutes |
| Block space per 10 minutes (24 MB or more 10: the ten busiest networks' median demand, 16.4 MB, and half again for growth) | 6.2 | 0.6 MB limit, 3.03 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) | ✗ | Two-minute probabilistic PoW blocks with a Monero-style spend lock; no protected zero-confirmation. |
| Pruned nodes (Old history dropped, every rule checked · Whitepaper §7) | ✓ | Monero-derived --prune-blockchain discards most old ring-signature data while keeping what validation needs. |
| Light clients (Payments verified from headers · Whitepaper §8) | ✗ | No SPV-style light client; wallets trust a daemon. |
| Adaptive block size (a bonus point, at most 10) | +1 | Monero's rule: block weight limit is twice the effective median of the last 100 blocks (300 kB penalty-free floor), held to a 100,000-block long-term median, with a reward penalty above the median; in consensus since launch. |
| Privacy | 10 | 10 of 10: whitepaper privacy 7 of 7, extra features 3 of 3 source |
| Protocol level privacy (Keys not tied to an identity · Whitepaper §10) | 10 | Wallet keys are generated locally and transfers are validated by ring signatures, with no identity condition. |
| UTXO ledger (Separate outputs, change to a new address · Whitepaper §2, §9) | 10 | Coins are separate unspent outputs: a payment spends whole outputs and sends the change to a new address, so the coins in one wallet need not share a history. |
| HD addresses (A new address for each payment, unlinked · Whitepaper §10) | 10 | One-time (stealth) addresses: every payment goes to a new address derived from the receiver's public address, unlinkable on chain; subaddresses as in Monero |
| Hidden amounts (Amounts confidential) | 10 | RingCT hides amounts, inherited from Monero at launch (2023). |
| Hidden parties (Sender and receiver hidden) | 10 | Ring signatures hide the sender and one-time stealth addresses the receiver. |
| Network privacy (Origin hidden by default) | 10 | Monero-derived node relays its transactions with Dandelion++ by default (cryptonote_protocol/levin_notify.cpp). |
| Programmability | 1.1 | 1 of 9 points source |
| Token issuance | 0 | No token issuance on the chain itself |
| Smart contracts | 0 | Monero-derived chain with fixed transaction types (transfers and reserve-asset conversions); no script or VM. |
| Multisig and time locks (Without a third party) | ✓ | Monero-style m-of-n multisig in its wallet code, and per-output unlock_time enforced by the consensus check is_tx_spendtime_unlocked. |
| Atomic swaps (With other chains) | ✗ | No hash locks, and no working adaptor-signature swap implementation for ZEPH was found. |
| Native DEX (Trades the coin itself, not a claim) | ✗ | No DEX found trading the coin itself: none on its own chain (DefiLlama), and not on THORChain, Maya, Chainflip, Komodo DeFi, BasicSwap, Bisq or Haveno (checked 2026-11-04). |
| Cross-chain messaging (Verified by the chain itself) | ✗ | No cross-chain feature in the protocol. |
| NFTs (Carried by the chain's rules) | ✗ | No user token or NFT type; only the protocol's own reserve assets. |
| Demand | 4 | average of 7 measures |
| Exchanges (10 or more: 10) | 2 | 2 exchanges |
| Daily volume ($10K 0, $1B or more 10) | 1.7 | $73,299 traded in 24 hours; #1746 by volume on the exchanges the site reads (scored on the median day of the last 30, $69,413) |
| Turnover (volume ÷ market cap, 5% a day: 10) | 8.5 | 2.6% of its market cap a day, median of the last 30 days |
| Order-book depth (±2% of the price ÷ market cap, 1%: 10) | 3.9 | $271 within 2% of the price on 1 exchange, 0.01% of its market cap, median of the last 15 days |
| Market cap ($1M 0, $10B or more 10) | 0.7 | $1.9M, 0.7 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) | 3 | 3 full years since 2023-07-05, 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 source |
| Positive | ||
| Steady work, 6 of 6 | ✓ | 0 commits in 0 of the last 12 months (github.com/ZephyrProtocol/zephyr); Zephyr v2.3.0 (Audit Completion), 11-16 Jun 2025; four releases in the last 24 months (v2.0.2 Jan 2025, v2.1.1 Apr 2025, v2.2.0 May 2025, v2.3.0 Jun 2025) but none in the 16 months since. |
| Shipped a security fix in two years, +1 | ✓ | Zephyr v2.0.2, Jan 2025: hard fork v7 'important security update' hotfix. |
| Conduct (origin, claims, halts) | 9 | 2 positive, 1 negative source |
| Positive record | ||
| Launched with a stated purpose, not as a joke | ✓ | |
| No claims by its founders that contradict its own design | ✓ | |
| Negative record | ||
| Halt, freeze or reversal, 2025-03-31 | ✗ | Developer-issued hard fork v8 (block 481,500) disabled all regular transfers and conversions, allowing only 'audit' transactions; coins not audited before hard fork v9 were declared invalid, and normal function returned only with hard fork v11 at block 536,000 on 2025-06-15 (exchanges had suspended deposits at the team's request since Jan 2025). github.com github.com explorer.zephyrprotocol.com |
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 Work coins
Bitcoin BTCA+
Zcash ZECA+
Dogecoin DOGEA+
OctaSpace OCTAA
Kadena KDAA
Phoenixcoin PXC
Hathor HTRBAll Proof of Work chains →Proof of Stake coins
Ethereum ETHA+
BNB BNBA
Solana SOLA+
TRON TRXA
Hyperliquid HYPEB
Cardano ADAA
NEAR Protocol NEARAAll Proof of Stake chains →Supply
12,371,554 ZEPH are in circulation, against no fixed cap — issuance has no defined end.
Launch and allocation
| Premine (allocated at launch) | 4.1% of today's supply |
|---|---|
| Sold by the issuer or insiders | 0% of today's supply |
| Developer share received since launch | 17.8% of today's supply |
| Developer share of new coins today | 0% |
| Fundraising | No sale and no investor round |
The genesis block paid 500,000 ZEPH to the team: ≈4.1% of the ~12.27M current supply.
No VC or token sale found (described as grassroots with no VC funding).
A one-off 1,921,650 ZEPH minted to a governance address at the V11 audit fork (block 536,000, June 2025) ≈15.7%, plus 5% of each block reward to a governance wallet until the V6 fork ≈2.1%: ≈17.8% of supply.
The site has no label yet. Genesis premine and governance cut are clear in code. The 1.92M audit-fork mint is the swing factor: it followed a 2024 exploit and a 2025 chain audit that voided unaudited coins, and its purpose (likely a reserve for legitimate unaudited holders) was not confirmed. Without it the figure is 6.2%. The denominator is also uncertain, because ZEPH converted into reserve and stable assets moves in and out of supply; the explorer's cumulative coinbase is 13.18M.
Sources: github.com · github.com · github.com · github.com · x.com · explorer.zephyrprotocol.com. Researched 2026-10-24, high confidence.
The work behind it
No source we can reach publishes a hashrate for Zephyr Protocol.
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 Zephyr Protocol
Zephyr Protocol is #203 among cryptocurrencies and #1608 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 1405 places between Zephyr Protocol'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).