HostDAI vs MSUSD — price, size and safety, side by side
DAI (Ethereum) vs MSUSD (Base) — every figure is the freshest dated measurement we hold for that token, never a live-feed guess. Prices stamped 2026-10-17 / 2026-10-16.
DAI vs MSUSD — normalized performance, 2026-09-08 to 2026-10-16T21:15:32
| DAI | MSUSD | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $0.9976 | $0.8864 |
| Market cap | $4.56B | $45.74M |
| 24h volume | $10.35M DEX | $1.34M DEX |
| Liquidity | $53.63M | $5.24M |
| FDV | $4.55B | $16.75M |
| Holders | 710,510 | 5,519 |
| Age (days) | 1,526 | 671 |
| Safety grade | B | B |
Where they differ
- DAI measures ~100× the market cap of MSUSD
- DAI measures ~10× the liquidity of MSUSD
- DAI measures ~7.7× the 24h volume of MSUSD
- DAI measures ~129× the holder count of MSUSD
What the data says
DAI
DAI answered a question the other stablecoins on this site don't ask: can a dollar exist on-chain without a company behind it? Since 2019, the contract at 0x6b175474e89094c44da98b954eedeac495271d0f has held near a dollar not because anyone promises redemption at a bank, but because every DAI is minted against locked crypto collateral worth more than it, with interest rates and liquidations — governed by MakerDAO, now rebranded Sky — doing the work a treasurer would. No single company can freeze your DAI or pause the contract; that censorship-resistance is the property its holders are actually paying for.
The honest complications have grown over the years. A large share of DAI's backing has long included centralized stablecoins and real-world assets, which reimports a slice of the issuer risk the design was born to escape — the March 2023 weekend when USDC's depeg dragged DAI to roughly $0.89 alongside it made that dependency visible. And the 2024 rebrand to Sky, with its upgrade path to the newer USDS token, means DAI is now the legacy branch of its own ecosystem: still enormous, still redeemable through the same machinery, but no longer where its creators' roadmap points. Neither fact is a defect; both belong in the price of holding it.
MSUSD
msUSD is Metronome Synth's synthetic dollar — you deposit volatile collateral (ETH, BTC wrappers) into the Synth engine and mint dollar-denominated synthetic positions against it. The contract 0x526728dbc96689597f85ae4cd716d4f7fccbae9d is the Base deployment our scan tracks, at $5.2 million of pool liquidity as of October 6, 2026.
The honest note, stated plainly: a synthetic dollar is not a stablecoin — msUSD can and does trade off its one-dollar mark (our current read shows it well below), because its price is set by pool dynamics and mint-redemption incentives, not by an issuer redeeming at par. That is a different risk class from USDC or USDT — hold it as a leveraged-collateral instrument, not as cash.
FAQ
Which is bigger, DAI or MSUSD?
By tracked market cap: DAI (Ethereum) measures $4.56B and MSUSD (Base) measures $45.74M — dated snapshots, not a live feed.
Which is safer, DAI or MSUSD?
On the contract checks we publish: DAI (Ethereum) grades B and MSUSD (Base) grades B. A grade is a structural check on the contract, not a promise about the asset.
How have DAI and MSUSD performed over the shared window?
Between 2026-09-08 and 2026-10-16T21:15:32, the measured snapshots show DAI at +0.45% and MSUSD at −0.64%.
The grade column is the one CMC's compare page cannot print — our grade is computed from the contract itself (mint/freeze authority, liquidity, holder concentration). Changes are measured over the shared window stated on the chart, 2026-09-08→2026-10-16T21:15:32; a token with fewer measured points measures a shorter span inside it.
Figures are dated on-chain snapshots, not a live feed. Safety grades are structural checks — not investment advice. Free · no signup · a HostDeFi product.