HostOP vs DAI — price, size and safety, side by side
OP (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.
OP vs DAI — normalized performance, 2026-09-21 to 2026-09-26T18:07:24
| OP | DAI | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $0.1455 | $0.9983 |
| Market cap | $299.40M | $4.59B |
| 24h volume | $2.83M | $3.88M |
| Liquidity | $1.07M | $73.32M |
| FDV | $559.19M | $4.59B |
| Holders | 1,370,841 | 706,985 |
| Age (days) | — | 1,526 |
| Safety grade | B | B |
Where they differ
- DAI measures ~15× the market cap of OP
- DAI measures ~68× the liquidity of OP
- OP measures ~1.9× the holder count of DAI
- over the shared window OP moved +11.8% while DAI moved +0.26%
What the data says
OP
OP at 0x4200000000000000000000000000000000000042 is the Optimism Collective's governance token — the canonical OP Mainnet deployment sitting in the chain's own vanity address space, not a bridged copy. The September 26, 2026 snapshot counts 1,370,841 holders around a $299.4 million market cap, $559.2 million fully diluted against a 4.3 billion total supply — the gap between the two figures is the unissued allocation the Collective still holds.
The contract posture is worth quoting exactly. Minting is still active — new supply can be minted, consistent with OP's ongoing distribution schedule. Freeze is revoked, and the code is not a proxy. Depth is the soft spot: $1.1 million of tracked pool liquidity is thin against a nine-figure cap, and $2.8 million of 24-hour volume means ordinary exits clear but size should be measured against the pool, not the headline.
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, OP or DAI?
By tracked market cap: OP (Optimism) measures $299.40M and DAI (Ethereum) measures $4.59B — dated snapshots, not a live feed.
Which is safer, OP or DAI?
On the contract checks we publish: OP (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 OP and DAI performed over the shared window?
Between 2026-09-21 and 2026-09-26T18:07:24, the measured snapshots show OP at +11.8% and DAI at +0.26%.
More comparisons
COINX vs OPJOE vs OPBAS vs OPAURA vs OPDAI vs PYUSDDAI vs BTCBDAI vs CBBTCUSDC vs DAI
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.