HostWETH vs WSTETH — price, size and safety, side by side
WETH (Ethereum) vs WSTETH (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.
WETH vs WSTETH — normalized performance, 2026-09-08 to 2026-10-17T03:15:24
| WETH | WSTETH | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $2.42K | $3.02K |
| Market cap | $5.41B | $11.49B |
| 24h volume | $462.86M DEX | $11.82M DEX |
| Liquidity | $902.53M | $48.32M |
| FDV | $5.39B | $11.44B |
| Holders | 3,680,746 | 39,244 |
| Age (days) | 1,727 | 386 |
| Safety grade | A | B |
Where they differ
- WSTETH measures ~2.1× the market cap of WETH
- WETH measures ~19× the liquidity of WSTETH
- WETH measures ~39× the 24h volume of WSTETH
- WETH measures ~94× the holder count of WSTETH
What the data says
WETH
WETH is the oldest load-bearing contract in DeFi. Deployed in December 2017 as WETH9, the contract at 0xc02aaa39b223fe8d0a0e5c4f27ead9083c756cc2 does exactly one thing: wrap ETH — which predates the ERC-20 standard and doesn't conform to it — into a token that does, redeemable one-for-one, instantly, by anyone, forever. It has no owner, no admin functions, no upgrade path, and no pause switch. Nearly every DEX trade, lending market, and NFT sale on Ethereum has settled through it at some point; it is less a token than a piece of the chain's plumbing.
That architecture is why the usual checklist comes back almost empty. There is no team to rug, no supply policy to abuse — WETH supply is simply however much ETH is currently deposited in the contract, minted on wrap and burned on unwrap. The failure mode people theorize about (the contract holding less ETH than WETH outstanding) would require a bug that eight-plus years of the highest-value adversarial testing in crypto has not found. HostDeFi's October 9, 2026 snapshot shows roughly $903 million of tracked pool liquidity and $73 million of daily volume on this deployment, and both understate reality — WETH is one side of thousands of pools our sample doesn't enumerate.
WSTETH
wstETH is stETH made legible to DeFi — the same claim on Lido-staked Ether, wrapped so the balance stops moving: where stETH re-bases your token count upward each day, wstETH holds a fixed count and lets the exchange rate against stETH do the appreciating. That is the shape lending markets, bridges and LPs need, which is why the contract at 0x7f39c581f595b53c5cb19bd0b3f8da6c935e2ca0 became the canonical collateral form — our October 9, 2026 snapshot reads $48.3 million of tracked pool liquidity on it.
The verdict therefore inherits stETH's, plus one wrapper-layer note. You hold a claim on staked ETH via Lido — subject to its validator set, Ethereum's exit queue, and stETH's own depeg memory (June 2022, when it traded visibly under par) — and the price shown for wstETH is stETH's price times a steadily growing conversion rate, so it will always quote above ETH while tracking correctly. Nothing about that is a defect; it is the mechanic to understand before reading the quote as a premium.
FAQ
Which is bigger, WETH or WSTETH?
By tracked market cap: WETH (Ethereum) measures $5.41B and WSTETH (Ethereum) measures $11.49B — dated snapshots, not a live feed.
Which is safer, WETH or WSTETH?
On the contract checks we publish: WETH (Ethereum) grades A and WSTETH (Ethereum) grades B. A grade is a structural check on the contract, not a promise about the asset.
How have WETH and WSTETH performed over the shared window?
Between 2026-09-08 and 2026-10-17T03:15:24, the measured snapshots show WETH at −2.19% and WSTETH at −1.78%.
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.