Dai (DAI)

Our assessment

Dai has $4.79bn circulating across 49 chains and traded at 0.9999 at this check — the tightest peg of any large stablecoin here. It is the oldest decentralised stablecoin still operating, and its collateral has changed profoundly since launch.

Overcollateralisation is the mechanism

Dai is minted against collateral worth more than the Dai issued, with liquidations enforcing the ratio automatically. No trust in an issuer's bank balance is required — the backing is on-chain and verifiable at any moment. That is the design that has kept the peg through market events that broke other decentralised stablecoins entirely.

The collateral is no longer only crypto

A substantial portion of backing now comes from real-world assets, including US Treasuries held through legal structures, and from centralised stablecoins. That improved stability and moved Dai's risk closer to the traditional financial system. Users who chose it for censorship resistance should understand that the backing today is not what it was in 2019.

March 2020 tested it properly

During the March 2020 crash, network congestion caused liquidation auctions to clear at near zero, leaving the system undercollateralised. It was recapitalised through a governance-run token auction. The mechanism did what it was designed to do under a severe stress, which is more than most stablecoins have demonstrated.

Who it suits

Dai fits users who want a stablecoin governed on-chain with verifiable collateral, accepting its real-world asset exposure. Users wanting purely crypto-backed exposure should read the current collateral composition first.