A tour of the varieties of DAI

$DAI, the native stablecoin of the MakerDAO ($MKR) system, has become a fundamental building block for decentralized finance that has enabled a variety of new financial products including:

xDAI - The first DAI derivative that runs on a delegated Proof-of-Stake (DPoS) sidechain to allow for frictionless transfers with short transaction times.

iDAI - A tokenized loan pool that increases in value by the second as it's underlying proceeds are loaned out to borrowers. If the value of the pool drops precipitously, the exchange rate will decrease spreading risk across the platform as opposed to the last people to withdraw funds.

cDAI - Another tokenized loan pool for Compound, similar to iDAI, except interest accrues per block and in the event of a loss to the underlying pool, the exchange rate does not decrease. This could lead to a bank run where the last lenders to withdraw their funds would sustain the entire loss.

gDAI - Using fulcrum to lend out assets and leveraging GasStationNetwork, Kyber and Uniswap to allow users to pay gas fees in DAi.

dDAI - Built using iDAI but uses GasStationNetwork to allow transaction fees to be paid in DAI.

LSDai - Interest rate swap built on Market Protocol's derivatives and cDAI.

IdleDAI - Tokenized DeFi rebalancer that lends DAI to either Fulcrum or Compound to maximize returns.