Dai DAI
Rank #27 by market capStablecoin
Stablecoin
Designed to hold a fixed value, usually one US dollar. Market cap here measures how much has been issued, not what anyone thinks it is worth.
Last 7 days
CM Profile: Dai
Cryptominium Profile. What we have established, measured and written about DAI, and what we have not.
- Established
- One contract is matched to this coin, on Ethereum.
- Its kind: stablecoin.
- Measured
- Selling $100,000 of DAI on Ethereum returned almost exactly the quoted price, on 8 October 2026.
- Selling $100,000 on Kraken's order book lost 0.66%, on 8 October 2026.
- Its price, recorded by us every day since 9 August 2026.
- Written, with sources
Read from our own records when this page was made. It describes what we know, and is not a view on whether to hold DAI. How each part is worked out
What changed
Week to 8 October- Price unchanged since 1 October.
- On Kraken, $100,000 now costs 0.66% to sell, against 0.21% over the previous month.
The price fell and selling got more expensive.
From our own measurements only, each against the month before. We do not say why a price moves. How this is worked out · Every coin this week
What it actually costs to sell DAI
Selling $100,000 of DAI returned 0.0% less than the quoted price — Deep. Measured 2026-10-08 on Ethereum.
Selling DAI on exchanges
Selling $100,000 of DAI into each exchange’s resting bids, measured against the mid price:
| Exchange | Lost | Got back | Measured |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kraken DAI/USD | 0.66% | $99,340 | 2026-10-08 |
Exchange figures need an account there (and KYC, a permitted country, the tokens already deposited), are before trading fees, and are never averaged with the on-chain figure. Binance is not included: it refuses requests from the region our servers are in. How this is measured →
Watch this number instead of remembering it. A free account keeps DAI on a list, records where it stood the day you added it, and emails you if selling it on these exchanges gets materially harder — one message, not a series. The measurement itself stays public; the account is for being told when it moves without you looking.
What Dai is
DAI is a dollar-pegged stablecoin created in 2017 by MakerDAO, and it works fundamentally differently from Tether or USDC. No company holds dollars in a bank for it. Instead, users lock crypto collateral into smart contracts and mint DAI against it, always depositing more value than they borrow.
If collateral falls too far in value, the position is automatically liquidated to keep the system solvent. The peg holds through these incentives plus interest-rate adjustments governed by MKR token holders.
The complication is what backs it now. Over time, a substantial share of DAI's collateral shifted into centralised assets — notably USDC and tokenised real-world debt — which means DAI has inherited much of the counterparty risk it was designed to avoid. A decentralised stablecoin heavily backed by a centralised one is a meaningfully weaker claim than the original design, and it is the most important thing to understand before treating DAI as censorship-resistant.
What Dai can do
Selling $100,000 through the pools on Ethereum returned 0.0% less than the quoted price. The full measurement →
Our own measurement · measured 8 October 2026
Dai earns a return only when it is locked in the protocol's savings contract. There is no minimum and it can be taken out at any time. The rate is set by a vote of the protocol's governance.
Source: The Maker Protocol white paper · checked 2 October 2026
Dai is soft-pegged to the US dollar. Its white paper says every Dai is backed by collateral locked in the protocol that is worth more than the Dai, and that a position judged too thin is sold off by automatic auction. It holds for as long as that collateral does.
Source: The Maker Protocol white paper · checked 2 October 2026
What a coin can do is not a reason to buy it or to sell it. Each answer names its source and the day we read it; where we could not source one, the row is left out. How these are written · Every coin we have written up
Where DAI lives
On Ethereum, Base and BNB Chain, GoPlus's analysis of each contract is read weekly: whether it has a function to block addresses or pause transfers, and whether an owner holds it. That is GoPlus's reading, not ours. Where a token exists on several chains, one copy's settings say nothing about the original coin.
Always verify a contract address against the project's own site before sending anything. Addresses are shown as published by CoinGecko, not as an endorsement — and identical-looking tokens on other chains are the most common way people lose money here.
Price change
Dai data synced 4m ago from CoinGecko. Figures shown in USD. This page is market information, not financial advice — and nothing here is a recommendation to buy or sell DAI.