HostALUSD vs DAI — price, size and safety, side by side
ALUSD (Optimism) vs DAI (Ethereum) — every figure is the freshest dated measurement we hold for that token, never a live-feed guess. Prices stamped 2026-09-26 / 2026-09-27.
ALUSD vs DAI — normalized performance, 2026-09-21 to 2026-09-26T18:07:24
| ALUSD | DAI | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $0.9538 | $0.9983 |
| Market cap | $9.99M | $4.59B |
| 24h volume | $1.92K | $3.88M |
| Liquidity | $1.14M | $73.32M |
| FDV | $1.61M | $4.59B |
| Holders | 5,630 | 706,985 |
| Age (days) | 1,181 | 1,526 |
| Safety grade | B | B |
Where they differ
- DAI measures ~459× the market cap of ALUSD
- DAI measures ~64× the liquidity of ALUSD
- DAI measures ~2,023× the 24h volume of ALUSD
- DAI measures ~126× the holder count of ALUSD
What the data says
ALUSD
ALUSD at 0xcb8fa9a76b8e203d8c3797bf438d8fb81ea3326a is Alchemix's USD on Optimism — the dollar that backs the protocol's self-repaying loan structure, where deposited collateral's yield amortizes the borrow. The September 26, 2026 snapshot prices a $10.0 million asset-wide market cap against a $1.6 million fully-diluted read of the local float of 1.7 million units — a small Optimism slice of a multi-chain stable.
The local book is deeper than it looks and quieter than it should be: $1.1 million of tracked depth reads deep against that float, while $1.9 thousand of 24-hour volume is a nearly dormant tape — the pool exists; the flow mostly does not. For an exit-sized holder that pairing is the real information: depth on paper, and a tape that rarely tests it.
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, ALUSD or DAI?
By tracked market cap: ALUSD (Optimism) measures $9.99M and DAI (Ethereum) measures $4.59B — dated snapshots, not a live feed.
Which is safer, ALUSD or DAI?
On the contract checks we publish: ALUSD (Optimism) grades B and DAI (Ethereum) grades B. A grade is a structural check on the contract, not a promise about the asset.
How have ALUSD and DAI performed over the shared window?
Between 2026-09-21 and 2026-09-26T18:07:24, the measured snapshots show ALUSD at −0.24% and DAI at +0.26%.
More comparisons
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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, 2026-09-21→2026-09-26T18:07:24; 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 NexFlow product.