Currently, DAI is the fifth largest stablecoin by market cap.
Tether (USDT) may have continued to be the market leader after all these years, but DAI has the perk of being open-source and decentralized – something that’s sought after in the DeF community.
DAI rises
According to Makerburn, the total DAI supply of MakerDAO, a decentralized stablecoin, reached $10 billion on February 8. Additionally, its stablecoin supply stands at around 62%.
Over the past couple of years, DAI has found its niche as one of the most preferred stablecoins in decentralized trades. Despite Tether’s controlling a lion’s share of stablecoins in circulation and comfortably being the go-to stablecoin in dollar-based crypto trades, MakerDAO’s native stablecoin has grown multi-fold.
DAI saw an increase in transfer volume towards the end of 2021. However, a recent report from Coin Metrics noted that this trend has changed as the numbers were broken soon after. In fact, much of the total stablecoin supply has been moved to other sidechains or Layer 2 ecosystems using “bridges” between these networks.
It is also important to note that DAI has found significant viability across several Ethereum-based decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols that use the decentralized token as a source of collateral or liquidity. Its use case bolstered as volatility picked up in the crypto markets.
DAI is built on Ethereum and
is stabilized at the value of the USD. The stablecoin is pegged 1:1 to this currency through a system called – the Maker (MKR) Dai Stablecoin System.
Argentinians Wrapped Up In DAI
Argentina’s perpetual crisis from high inflation capital controls – coupled with political turmoil paved the US dollar to become the most wanted foreign currency. However, DAI had managed to capture the imagination of the investors in the country.
As reported by CryptoPotato, Bitcoin continues to be the favorite for the Latin American country, but DAI is not far behind. Mariano Di Pietrantonio of the Maker Foundation previously claimed that the stablecoin had achieved status as a “popular store of value” in Argentina. He stated,
“Dai isn’t yet used much for day-to-day purchases, such as groceries, because merchants typically don’t accept it. But people are storing their savings in Dai and then converting their Dai back to their local currency as they need it. People are trading Dai in different ways––in person, using bank transfers, and so on.”
