HostDAI vs USDAI — price, size and safety, side by side
DAI (Ethereum) vs USDAI (Arbitrum) — every figure is the freshest dated measurement we hold for that token, never a live-feed guess. Prices stamped 2026-10-17 / 2026-10-17.
DAI vs USDAI — normalized performance, 2026-09-08 to 2026-10-17T03:15:24
| DAI | USDAI | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $0.9976 | $1.00 |
| Market cap | $4.56B | $346.15M |
| 24h volume | $10.35M DEX | $149.90K DEX |
| Liquidity | $53.63M | $1.19M |
| FDV | $4.55B | $345.20M |
| Holders | 710,510 | 3,073 |
| Age (days) | 1,526 | 448 |
| Safety grade | B | B |
Where they differ
- DAI measures ~13× the market cap of USDAI
- DAI measures ~45× the liquidity of USDAI
- DAI measures ~69× the 24h volume of USDAI
- DAI measures ~231× the holder count of USDAI
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.
USDAI
USDAI is USD.ai's stablecoin — a dollar token backed by loans against GPU and AI-infrastructure collateral, one of the more unusual collateral stacks in the stablecoin set. The contract 0x0a1a1a107e45b7ced86833863f482bc5f4ed82ef is what our scan tracks: $1.2 million of pool liquidity as of October 9, 2026 on Arbitrum, trading essentially at its dollar peg.
The honest mechanics: the backing is hardware-collateralized lending — claims on AI infrastructure and the loans against it — which is genuinely different from the treasury-bill or crypto-overcollateralized models most stablecoins use, and carries its own risks (hardware values depreciate and loan books can go bad). The pool here is thin, so redemptions at size route through the issuer's machinery rather than the public market.
FAQ
Which is bigger, DAI or USDAI?
By tracked market cap: DAI (Ethereum) measures $4.56B and USDAI (Arbitrum) measures $346.15M — dated snapshots, not a live feed.
Which is safer, DAI or USDAI?
On the contract checks we publish: DAI (Ethereum) grades B and USDAI (Arbitrum) grades B. A grade is a structural check on the contract, not a promise about the asset.
How have DAI and USDAI performed over the shared window?
Between 2026-09-08 and 2026-10-17T03:15:24, the measured snapshots show DAI at −0.26% and USDAI at −0.04%.
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→2026-10-17T03:15:24; 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.