Try Quests to earn cryptoMakerDAO StableCoin VS USD StableCoin
Introduction🚩
Welcome to my comprehensive USDC and DAI comparison dashboard!
In recent years, the rise of decentralized finance (DeFi) has paved the way for a new era of digital currencies. Stablecoins, in particular, have gained popularity due to their ability to provide a stable value while still being powered by blockchain technology.
USDC (USD Coin) and DAI are two of the most prominent stablecoins in the market today. USDC is a centralized stablecoin pegged to the US dollar and backed by regulated financial institutions, while DAI is a decentralized stablecoin that aims to maintain a value of $1 through a complex system of smart contracts.
What makes DAI unique is that it is created by MakerDAO, a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) built on the Ethereum blockchain. MakerDAO allows users to generate DAI by locking up Ethereum as collateral, creating a decentralized and self-sustaining system.
In this dashboard, we will provide a comprehensive comparison of USDC and DAI, including their market capitalization, trading volume, and key features. Join us as we dive deeper into the world of stablecoins and explore the exciting possibilities that lie ahead.
Method⚡
In this dashboard, I compared the performance of two of the most popular stablecoins on Ethereum, USDC and DAI, to see how their centralized or decentralized nature affected their performance in the crypto market.
To accomplish this, I extracted data from the ==Ethereum.core== database provided by Flipsidecrypto and used different tables for each part of the dashboard. To filter for these two stablecoins, I used their symbol and contract addresses:
USDC: 0xA0b86991c6218b36c1d19D4a2e9Eb0cE3606eB48
DAI: 0x6B175474E89094C44Da98b954EedeAC495271d0F
To gather information about their swap activity, I used the ez_dex_swaps table. For their transfers and holders, I used the ez_token_transfers table, and to identify the addresses, I used the dim_labels table.
Overall, this dashboard will provide insights into the performance of these stablecoins and how their centralized or decentralized nature has impacted their market performance.
Findings👀
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In this section, I have analyzed the swapping activity of two stablecoins on Ethereum DEXs and aimed to determine which DEX has a higher market share for swapping activities.
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Both USDC and DAI experienced their highest net volumes in March 2021, and there were several reasons for this. One major factor was the increasing popularity of decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols, which allow users to earn interest on their cryptocurrency holdings and trade them in a decentralized, non-custodial manner. Many of these protocols use USDC or DAI as a means of providing liquidity and trading pairs for other cryptocurrencies. Additionally, the growing interest in non-fungible tokens (NFTs) also contributed to the high swap volumes, as many NFT marketplaces use USDC as a means of buying and selling NFTs.
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Furthermore, the overall growth of the cryptocurrency market and the increasing adoption of cryptocurrencies by institutional investors played a role in the high swap volumes of USDC and DAI. As more investors seek to diversify their portfolios with cryptocurrencies, stablecoins like USDC and DAI provide a stable store of value that can be easily traded for other cryptocurrencies as needed. Additionally, the launch of Uniswap-v3 may have been a contributing factor to their increase in popularity.
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When examining the monthly charts of USDC and DAI swap activities on DEXs, it is evident that DAI's swap activity was bearish during this time, while USDC's popularity continued to grow day by day, particularly on Uniswap-v3. Additionally, it should be noted that USDC recorded its highest swap activities on Uniswap-v3 a few months ago in November 2022, with almost 530K swaps generated by 124K swappers.
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Uniswap-v2 and v3 recorded the highest swap activity for both USDC and DAI over time, but it is worth mentioning that USDC recorded significantly more swap activity on Uniswap platforms than DAI over time.
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Findings👀
- The two most popular swap pairs involving stablecoins and WETH on the Ethereum network have consistently been DAI/WETH and USDC/WETH. In terms of statistics, these pairs have far outpaced other swap pairs.
- The DAI/WETH pair has recorded over 2.85M swaps, generating a volume of 71B over time. In comparison, the USDC/WETH pair has generated 10.45M swaps, with a total volume of almost 500B . This data clearly shows that USDC is much more popular than DAI among Ethereum users.
Findings👀
- In this section, I have presented an analysis of the sectors and platforms that have received the highest amount of USDC and DAI on Ethereum to date.
- As discussed earlier in the token distribution, it is evident that DEXs and DeFi have received the most DAI, with Uniswap being the biggest DEX recipient with over 456 billion DAI over time.
- In contrast, CEXs have received the largest share of USDC, with almost 2 trillion USDC received, of which more than 50% has been acquired by Coinbase, with over 1.14 trillion USDC received over time.
Findings👀
- In this section, I have presented the top 20 USDC and DAI holders, along with their address and address type. Additionally, I have included two pie charts illustrating the distribution of USDC and DAI holders by the amount they hold.
- The address with the largest amount of USDC is owned by Binance CEX, holding over 2.5T USDC. On the other hand, the biggest DAI holder belongs to DeFi, with a total of 281M DAI.
- The pie charts reveal that both USDC and DAI holders possess less than one coin, followed by the 10-100 range. Almost half of DAI holders (50%) have less than 1 DAI, while for USDC holders, those with less than 1 USDC account for 35% of the total share, which is higher than any other category.
Conclusion💡
- Uniswap v2 and v3 have emerged as clear leaders in DEX activity on Ethereum, particularly when it comes to the trading of USDC and DAI. In March 2021, both stablecoins saw their highest levels of swap activity ever. Notably, the USDC and DAI pairs with WETH generated particularly large numbers.
- Interestingly, DEXs hold the majority of DAI while CEXs hold the majority of USDC. This may be attributed to the fact that DAI is decentralized while USDC is centralized.
- Over time, Uniswap has received the largest amount of DAI, with over 456B received, while Coinbase has received the most USDC with over 1.1T.
- We have tracked the top 20 holders of USDC and DAI and discovered that the largest USDC holder is Binance CEX while the largest DAI holder is a DeFi address called "cdai".
- However, it's important to note that most of the stablecoin holders hold less than 1 unit of USDC or DAI.
