DAI is a stablecoin based on the ERC-20 token of Ethereum. Although its value is anchored to the dollar, its issuance is decentralized thanks to the collateralization of its guarantees.

Its origins go back to the MakerDAO in 2014 aiming at the creation of a DAO to support a stable currency within Ethereum.

In 2017 the efforts paid off with the creation and start-up of the first version of DAI, known at that time as SAI. Its control was based on smart contracts and not on the fiat currencies of a bank and its variables were decided by a DAO where holders of Maker (MKR) tokens could participate.

Its main goal was to create a secure means of storing value. Bitcoin and Ethereum suffer from volatility immersed in the growth of the sector. This is not a problem of economic systems that seek to profit from this. But within a platform of loans, savings or money transfers it is not desired.

Thanks to a collateral guarantee system, DAI can offer parity with respect to the dollar using high volatility cryptocurrencies. In this way, they can carry out fixed and stable value operations on other platforms with the security of guaranteed deposits. Regardless of whether cryptocurrencies go up or down, the value will always be the same and there are guarantees to avoid loss of value.

Before comparing DAI to other stablecoins, we have to actually choose which ones will we compare it to. To do so, in this dashboard we have based this decision according to their market cap. In the picture below, we can see the top 4 stablecoins in mc according to CoinMarketCap. For that reason, we will be comparing DAI to USDT, USDC and BUSD.

What is DAI?

To compare the daily volume from the different stablecoins we will use the ethereum.udm_events table. We will then filter by the 4 stablecoins symbol and sum their amount_usd. Then we will group them by day and currency, and order them by date and volume. The following chart shows the massive amount of daily volume that the aforementioned coins have, with some days reaching $40B.

But what is DAI actually used for? To check it out, we will use the origin_function_name from the ethereum.udm_events table to know DAI's performed actions. Then we will count how many transactions apply to each action. We are only showing the top 5 actions, as there are many others but in a smaller proportion.

Other Coins

Volume Comparison

DAI's Most Common Uses

In the previous chart we can see the daily volume comparison normalized. This way it's easier to spot the differences in volume. We can see that USDT is not only the number 1 stablecoin in market cap, but clearly also in volume. Nevertheless, it has been decreasing as time has gone by. DAI has been pretty much stable in volume in comparison to the others, with a huge spike on December 2022, when the market was very bullish and Bitcoin's price hit an ATH. USDC also had a huge increase in volume on those dates, but its growth has been way bigger than DAI's over the time. During most of 2021, USDC's volume was 3-5 times DAI's volume. Finally, BUSD appeared at the end of April 2021, and has had a lower daily volume than DAI's, but still being also very constant throughout this past year.

Finally, the chart below shows the all time volume comparison between the different stablecoins. Clearly, USDT is leading in volume, but with USDC a close second. DAI on the other hand, has 1/3 of USDT's volume, and BUSD has almost 1/3 of DAI's volume.

In the following chart we can see its top 5 most common uses:

1. Almost 60% of all actions where DAI was involved are transfers.

2. The second most common action is to swap DAI for another token. This makes sense as many people like to use stablecoins when performing swaps, as they are pegged to the dollar and are usually safe being non-volatile.

3. Finally, we have executes, followed by contract and permit approvals.