HostSTETH vs DAI — price, size and safety, side by side
STETH (Ethereum) vs DAI (Ethereum) — every figure is the freshest dated measurement we hold for that token, never a live-feed guess. Prices stamped 2026-10-16 / 2026-10-17.
STETH vs DAI — normalized performance, 2026-09-08 to 2026-10-16T21:15:32
| STETH | DAI | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $2.46K | $0.9976 |
| Market cap | $24.20B | $4.56B |
| 24h volume | $6.05M DEX | $10.35M DEX |
| Liquidity | $74.96M | $53.63M |
| FDV | $24.16B | $4.55B |
| Holders | — | 710,510 |
| Age (days) | 1,549 | 1,526 |
| Safety grade | B | B |
Where they differ
- STETH measures ~5.3× the market cap of DAI
- DAI measures ~1.7× the 24h volume of STETH
What the data says
STETH
stETH is the receipt that made Ethereum staking liquid — deposit ETH with Lido, receive stETH, and the balance re-bases upward daily as staking rewards accrue. The contract at 0xae7ab96520de3a18e5e111b5eaab095312d7fe84 is the canonical deployment; our October 9, 2026 snapshot reads $75.0 million of tracked pool liquidity, against only about $1.5 million of recorded daily volume in this pair set. That thin on-chain turnover is the honest kind: stETH's real exit is the redemption path through Lido itself plus deep exchange books, not the DEX pools our sampler measures.
The risk shape is the one every liquid-staking token carries: stETH is a claim on staked ETH, not ETH — it has traded visibly under par before (June 2022, when withdrawal uncertainty met a leverage unwind), and its value rests on Lido's validator set, Ethereum's exit queue, and the redemption machinery that ultimately anchors it. A rebase token also confuses some wallets, DeFi pools and tax tools — the count in your balance literally changes daily, which is exactly the friction its wrapped sibling wstETH exists to remove.
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.
FAQ
Which is bigger, STETH or DAI?
By tracked market cap: STETH (Ethereum) measures $24.20B and DAI (Ethereum) measures $4.56B — dated snapshots, not a live feed.
Which is safer, STETH or DAI?
On the contract checks we publish: STETH (Ethereum) grades B and DAI (Ethereum) grades B. A grade is a structural check on the contract, not a promise about the asset.
How have STETH and DAI performed over the shared window?
Between 2026-09-08 and 2026-10-16T21:15:32, the measured snapshots show STETH at −0.66% and DAI at +0.45%.
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→2026-10-16T21:15:32; 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.