HostPYUSD vs DAI — price, size and safety, side by side
PYUSD (Ethereum) vs DAI (Ethereum) — every figure is the freshest dated measurement we hold for that token, never a live-feed guess. Prices stamped 2026-09-27 / 2026-09-27.
PYUSD vs DAI — normalized performance, 2026-09-08 to 2026-09-27T15:10:18
| PYUSD | DAI | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $0.9991 | $1.00 |
| Market cap | $2.78B | $4.62B |
| 24h volume | $7.44M | $2.79M |
| Liquidity | $71.03M | $73.15M |
| FDV | $1.73B | $4.62B |
| Holders | 107,969 | 707,548 |
| Age (days) | 250 | 1,526 |
| Safety grade | B | B |
Where they differ
- DAI measures ~1.7× the market cap of PYUSD
- PYUSD measures ~2.7× the 24h volume of DAI
- DAI measures ~6.6× the holder count of PYUSD
What the data says
PYUSD
PYUSD is what a stablecoin looks like when it's built for regulators first and DeFi second. PayPal USD is issued not by PayPal directly but by Paxos Trust Company, a New York–chartered trust supervised by NYDFS, with reserves held in dollar deposits, U.S. Treasuries, and equivalents, attested monthly. The Ethereum deployment lives at 0x6c3ea9036406852006290770bedfcaba0e23a0e8, where NexFlow's September 27, 2026 snapshot records roughly $71 million of tracked pool liquidity and $11 million of daily on-chain volume — modest next to USDC or USDT, in keeping with a coin whose primary life is inside PayPal and Venmo balances rather than on DEXes.
Read the contract powers through the regulated-issuer lens or you'll misread them as red flags. PYUSD's contract can mint (against dollars in), burn (against dollars out), pause transfers entirely, and freeze or even wipe balances at specific addresses under Paxos's asset-protection role. On an anonymous token, that list is a rug in waiting; here it is the legally mandated toolkit of a New York trust company, and NYDFS supervision is precisely the reason those powers exist. The trade you make holding PYUSD is explicit: maximum issuer accountability, in exchange for maximum issuer control.
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, PYUSD or DAI?
By tracked market cap: PYUSD (Ethereum) measures $2.78B and DAI (Ethereum) measures $4.62B — dated snapshots, not a live feed.
Which is safer, PYUSD or DAI?
On the contract checks we publish: PYUSD (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 PYUSD and DAI performed over the shared window?
Between 2026-09-08 and 2026-09-27T15:10:18, the measured snapshots show PYUSD at −0.09% and DAI at −0.19%.
More comparisons
PYUSD vs BTCBPYUSD vs CBBTCPYUSD vs WETHUSDC vs PYUSDDAI vs BTCBDAI vs CBBTCUSDC vs DAIDAI vs WETH
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→2026-09-27T15:10:18; 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.