HostUSDE vs RETH — price, size and safety, side by side
USDE (Ethereum) vs RETH (Ethereum) — every figure is the freshest dated measurement we hold for that token, never a live-feed guess. Prices stamped 2026-10-17 / 2026-10-16.
USDE vs RETH — normalized performance, 2026-09-14 to 2026-10-16T21:15:32
| USDE | RETH | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $1.00 | $2.88K |
| Market cap | $4.80B | $1.00B |
| 24h volume | $15.40M DEX | $1.77M DEX |
| Liquidity | $13.17M | $12.13M |
| FDV | $4.80B | $1.00B |
| Holders | 48,976 | 21,853 |
| Age (days) | 84 | 1,507 |
| Safety grade | B | B |
Where they differ
- USDE measures ~4.8× the market cap of RETH
- USDE measures ~8.7× the 24h volume of RETH
- USDE measures ~2.2× the holder count of RETH
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.
RETH
rETH is Rocket Pool's liquid staking receipt — the decentralized alternative in the ETH-staking market: anyone can run a Rocket Pool "minipool" validator with 8 ETH plus RPL collateral, and rETH appreciates against ETH as rewards accrue. The contract 0xae78736cd615f374d3085123a210448e74fc6393 is the canonical deployment; our October 6, 2026 read shows $12.1 million of tracked pool liquidity, with rETH's deeper venues spread across the wider DeFi stack.
The honest framing: rETH's pitch is credible neutrality — a permissionless operator set rather than one company's validators — and the trade-off is the usual one: a smaller, more fragmented liquidity surface than stETH and its own smart-contract surface (minipool mechanics, oracle DAO) instead of a single issuer's operations. The wrapper price is not ETH's price — it floats on its own exchange rate and has traded at discounts in stress.
FAQ
Which is bigger, USDE or RETH?
By tracked market cap: USDE (Ethereum) measures $4.80B and RETH (Ethereum) measures $1.00B — dated snapshots, not a live feed.
Which is safer, USDE or RETH?
On the contract checks we publish: USDE (Ethereum) grades B and RETH (Ethereum) grades B. A grade is a structural check on the contract, not a promise about the asset.
How have USDE and RETH performed over the shared window?
Between 2026-09-14 and 2026-10-16T21:15:32, the measured snapshots show USDE at −0.15% and RETH at −1.84%.
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, 2026-09-14→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.