DAI is a stablecoin that is soft pegged to the US dollar. It is decentralized, unbiased, collateral-backed, and is also the key to the MakerDAO lending system. Currently, MakerDAO is one of the largest and most established dApps running on the Ethereum blockchain.

The MakerDAO protocol allows anyone with ETH to lend themselves money in the form of DAI stablecoin. Dai is resistant to hyperinflation since it is literally designed to minimize volatility and resist aggressive price fluctuations. Essentially, anyone anywhere can generate the Dai stablecoin against crypto collateral assets.

DAI in its current form was launched in 2018. MakerDAO created token as the new Multi-Collateral Dai token. This replaced the previous one, which has been renamed to SAI (Single-Collateral Dai).

Since the release of Single-Collateral Dai in 2017, Dai’s success has grown together with the broad industry adoption of stablecoins. Stablecoins are cryptocurrencies designed to maintain price value and function similarly to FIAT currencies. Stablecoin popularity has sharply risen, and they have become an integral part of DeFi decentralized applications as a whole.

What are Multi-Collateral DAI key features and how does it work?

MakerDAO works by users locking up ETH in smart contracts on the MakerDAO network, network participants then have borrow to a percentage of the collateral value. This depends on the Liquidation Ratio of a certain vault. The more ETH locked in the smart contracts, the more DAI is generated. For a user to access their locked ETH, they must pay back the DAI loan along with any fees. The DAI stablecoin system also accepts any ERC-20 asset that has been approved by MKR holders as collateral.

Generated DAI is kept stable through the collateral assets that are deposited into Maker Vaults on the MakerDAO Protocol. The value of the collateral deposited must be more than the total value of the DAI issued to the user. There is a benefit to locking up collateral since users can deposit riskier assets and get stablecoin in return, thus, minimizing their overall risk exposure. Some of the most popular collateral to be locked is ETH and USDC.

The Maker Protocol uses two tokens in its model. As mentioned, the first is the collateral-backed DAI stablecoin. The second is the MKR token that is used for protocol governance. MKR is utilized by stakeholders to maintain the system and manage the DAI stablecoin. For example, MKR token holders must first vote and approve each ERC-20 token before it can be used as collateral. One MKR token is equal to one vote.

MKR itself is an ERC-20 asset running on the Ethereum blockchain and it can be minted or burned depending on how close the DAI stablecoin is to the US dollar.

What can Multi-Collateral Dai (DAI) be used for?

Once in a user’s possession, DAI can be used just like any other crypto asset. For example, it can be sent to other users, traded and exchanged for other cryptos, and used as payment for services. DAI can also be held as savings through Maker’s DAI Savings Rate (DSR).

DAI is also used as the deferred payment method to settle debts in the MakerDao Protocol.