HostUSDE vs AZTEC — price, size and safety, side by side
USDE (Ethereum) vs AZTEC (Ethereum) — 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.
USDE vs AZTEC — normalized performance, 2026-09-08 to 2026-10-17T06:15:22
| USDE | AZTEC | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $1.00 | $0.02028 |
| Market cap | $4.80B | $172.57M |
| 24h volume | $15.40M DEX | $906.17K DEX |
| Liquidity | $13.17M | $13.13M |
| FDV | $4.80B | $172.57M |
| Holders | 48,976 | 2 |
| Age (days) | 84 | 276 |
| Safety grade | B | A |
Where they differ
- USDE measures ~28× the market cap of AZTEC
- USDE measures ~17× the 24h volume of AZTEC
- USDE measures ~24,488× the holder count of AZTEC
- over the shared window USDE moved +0.07% while AZTEC moved +36.4%
What the data says
USDE
USDe is Ethena's synthetic dollar — a stablecoin that holds its peg not with bank deposits but with a delta-neutral trade: spot crypto collateral (staked ETH, liquid stables) hedged by short perpetual futures, so the portfolio's dollar value stays flat whatever the market does. The contract 0x4c9edd5852cd905f086c759e8383e09bff1e68b3 is the canonical Ethereum deployment — USDe also exists on Solana under a different mint, where it is one of the deeper stable pools in our corpus. Our October 9, 2026 read shows $13.2 million of tracked pool liquidity on the mainnet venues.
The honest mechanics: USDe's yield is not magic — it is the funding-rate spread between staking yield and the perp market's willingness to pay longs, and that spread can and does go negative. When funding flips, Ethena pays the hedge instead of earning it, and the carry can invert into a slow bleed. The second layer is counterparty: the short positions sit on offshore exchanges through settlement custody, so exchange failures or frozen collateral are real, non-theoretical risks — the design survived the October 2025 liquidation cascade, which is evidence, not a guarantee. It is also not the same risk shape as UST: USDe is fully collateralized at inception; the failure mode is a sustained negative-funding grind plus a custody break, not a mint-redeem death spiral.
AZTEC
AZTEC is the privacy-network token — the asset of the Aztec protocol building programmable privacy on Ethereum via zero-knowledge proofs, one of the few long-horizon technical bets that shipped through multiple crypto winters. The deployment 0xa27ec0006e59f245217ff08cd52a7e8b169e62d2 is the mint; our October 6, 2026 snapshot reads $13.1 million of tracked pool liquidity.
The honest framing: Aztec's thesis is that privacy becomes a default rather than a mixer — a genuine technical claim with years of published research behind it — and the token's value rides on whether that bet lands as a network people route through, which a liquidity snapshot cannot answer. Privacy infrastructure also carries a regulatory surface most tokens don't; that cuts both ways for holders.
FAQ
Which is bigger, USDE or AZTEC?
By tracked market cap: USDE (Ethereum) measures $4.80B and AZTEC (Ethereum) measures $172.57M — dated snapshots, not a live feed.
Which is safer, USDE or AZTEC?
On the contract checks we publish: USDE (Ethereum) grades B and AZTEC (Ethereum) grades A. A grade is a structural check on the contract, not a promise about the asset.
How have USDE and AZTEC performed over the shared window?
Between 2026-09-08 and 2026-10-17T06:15:22, the measured snapshots show USDE at +0.07% and AZTEC at +36.4%.
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→2026-10-17T06:15:22; 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.