_This article is from: _Coinbase Ventures
Translation｜Odaily Planet Daily (@OdailyChina); Translator｜Azuma (@azumaeth)_
Editor’s Note: The market is quiet, and narratives are exhausted. At this current juncture, cryptocurrency investors' faith in the future is wavering, and the direction ahead seems increasingly unclear. However, some teams are still actively reconstructing old narratives and exploring new ones, willing to invest a certain amount of risk capital for this purpose. The following is an analysis and reflection from the Coinbase Ventures team on several potential investment areas for 2026, which may help you break through the fog and find new focal points.
The following is the original content from Coinbase Ventures, translated by Odaily Planet Daily.
TL;DR
In the spirit of open collaboration, we share a series of concepts that our team is most excited about in the areas of asset tokenization, professional exchanges and trading terminals, next-generation DeFi, and AI + robotics. We are actively looking for suitable teams to invest in within these categories. If you are building in these areas, we would love to connect.
Preparing for 2026
The forefront of the crypto space is changing every year. In 2025, we witnessed the restructuring of stablecoin infrastructure in the payment sector, cross-chain proofs compressing settlement times that once took days to mere moments, prediction markets breaking through and gaining mainstream adoption, and new DEX models making "everything tradable on-chain" a reality. These achievements have opened new exploration spaces for some ambitious teams who are working tirelessly to build the next major breakthrough in the crypto space. If you compare the current market conditions to the beginning of the year, you will find deeper liquidity, smarter privacy, more genuine interoperability, and on-chain "tracks" complementing AI. Regardless of how price charts fluctuate, we remain confident in future developments.
Below are the concepts our team is most excited about as we step into 2026, as well as answers to a question we are often asked — "What should I build next?". We believe the following categories will be where the next major breakthrough company or protocol emerges, and these are the areas we are actively seeking to invest in.
RWA Perpetual Contracts — The Perpetualization of Everything
Author of this section: Kinji Steimetz (@kinjisteimetz)
As on-chain Real World Assets (RWA) regain interest, investors are seeking new forms of risk exposure, and perpetual contracts — the most tested trading product in the crypto space — provide a structurally faster and more flexible path than tokenization. Thanks to recent improvements in perpetual contract DEX infrastructure, RWAs can offer synthetic investment opportunities for off-chain assets through perpetual contracts.
We see this category developing in two directions. First, investment opportunities for special assets are being brought on-chain; since perpetual contracts do not require holding the underlying asset, markets can form around almost anything, achieving the "perpetualization of everything" from private companies to economic data releases; second, as the crypto space increasingly intertwines with macro markets, a more mature group of traders is seeking to express broader views, not just going long on digital assets, which will create demand for on-chain macro asset investment opportunities, allowing traders to hedge or build positions through tools linked to oil, inflation breakeven points, credit spreads, and volatility.
Professional Exchanges and Trading Terminals
Alternative Prop AMM
Author of this section: Kinji Steimetz (@kinjisteimetz)
The rise of perpetual contract DEXs, application-specific chains, and Rollups highlights the importance of market structure design in building sustainable exchanges, especially in protecting market makers from malicious order flow. While these newer environments can directly embed such protective mechanisms at the base layer, replicating similar structures on general chains (like the Ethereum mainnet) remains very challenging unless significant protocol upgrades are made.
We are increasingly focused on projects that can accelerate on-chain market structure development within a broader ecosystem. An emerging model is Prop-AMMs on Solana, where static order liquidity can only be executed through aggregators, completely isolating LPs from predatory order flow. This "proprietary-driven" approach is expected to significantly drive market structure innovation before improvements at the base layer arrive, and its potential applications extend far beyond Solana's spot market.
Prediction Market Trading Terminals
Author of this section: Jonathan King (@jonathankingvc)
Prediction markets have become one of the most mainstream consumer-facing crypto applications, truly bridging the gap from crypto-native markets to mass adoption. However, current prediction markets are suffering from the same fragmentation that plagued early DeFi — users need to operate multiple interfaces simultaneously, tools are extremely limited, and liquidity pools are isolated from one another. Prediction market aggregators have emerged, and we expect them to become the dominant interface layer, consolidating over $600 million in liquidity currently scattered across platforms, providing users with a unified view of real-time event odds across platforms.
You can imagine a trading terminal like this (with an interface experience similar to Axiom, but specifically serving event contracts): equipped with professional-grade tools, including advanced order types, filters/charts, multi-platform smart routing, position tracking, cross-platform arbitrage insights, and more.
Next-Generation DeFi
Composability of Perpetual Contract Markets
Author of this section: Ethan Oak (@0xNoroc)
Perpetual futures are evolving from isolated trading venues into composable DeFi markets, thereby opening up new boundaries of capital efficiency. Major perpetual contract exchanges like Hyperliquid and Lighter are leading the way in integrating with lending protocols, allowing users to earn collateral yields while maintaining leveraged positions.
As perpetual contract DEX monthly trading volumes reach $1.4 trillion and grow at a rate of 300% per year, we may witness protocols expanding the utility of perpetual futures in 2026, allowing traders to hedge, earn yields, and utilize leverage simultaneously without sacrificing liquidity.
Unsecured Loans / Credit
Author of this section: Jonathan King (@jonathankingvc)
The unsecured credit-based lending market is the next frontier for DeFi, and breakthrough models may emerge in 2026 that combine on-chain reputation with off-chain data to unlock large-scale unsecured loans.
The market opportunity is immense, with $1.3 trillion in revolving unsecured credit lines just in the U.S., and the crypto market can fully capture this pie through higher capital efficiency and global accessibility. For builders in this space, the challenge lies in designing scalable sustainable risk models. Once successful, DeFi will truly become an infrastructure that can comprehensively surpass traditional banking systems.
On-Chain Privacy
Author of this section: Ethan Oak (@0xNoroc)
Blockchains are known for their transparency, but if users cannot maintain privacy, large-scale mainstream adoption may never be achieved. Institutions and professional retail traders cannot trade if their strategies are continuously leaked to competitors, and ordinary users do not want their entire financial history visible to the world on-chain.
We see developers focusing heavily on privacy-preserving assets (like Zcash) and DeFi applications (such as private order books, lending/borrowing, etc.) as well as privacy blockchains designed specifically for payments. Whether based on networks built for privacy or through advanced cryptography (ZKPs, FHE, MPC, TEE, etc.) on existing public chains, these tools can significantly reduce the risk of user exposure to malicious actors while maintaining verifiability on the blockchain.
AI and Robotics
Robotics and Bionic Data Collection
Author of this section: Kinji Steimetz (@kinjisteimetz)
As AI continues to expand, the market is beginning to look towards the next technological frontier, with an increasing consensus that robotics may define the next stage of innovation. While many teams are working in this direction, there remains a critical gap in training robots and embodied AI systems, namely that available datasets are still limited and fragmented.
The most scarce data is refined physical interaction data, such as grip strength, pressure sensing, and multi-object manipulation (especially with deformable materials like fabric and wires). Although this challenge extends beyond the crypto industry, incentive-based data collection models like DePIN (Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Network) provide a viable path for large-scale collection of high-quality physical interaction data, which is expected to accelerate the development and deployment of advanced robotic systems.
Human Proof
Author of this section: Hoolie Tejwani (@HoolieG)
We are approaching a critical point where everything you see on your internet screen will be difficult to distinguish whether it is generated by a human or AI.
We believe that combining biometric technology, cryptographic signatures, and open-source developer standards is crucial for establishing a "human proof" solution that will complement AI in new human-computer interaction models. Worldcoin (one of our portfolio companies) has been at the forefront of anticipating and addressing this issue. We are very willing to support various solutions to tackle this increasingly complex challenge.
AI for On-Chain Development and Security
Author of this section: Jonathan King (@jonathankingvc)
Smart contract development is about to have its "GitHub Copilot" moment. In 2026, we are likely to see AI Agents further lowering the barriers to on-chain development — founders without technical backgrounds will be able to launch on-chain businesses in hours instead of months, with Agents responsible for generating smart contract code, conducting security audits, and providing ongoing monitoring.
The opportunity lies in Agent tools, which can make smart contract development and security/risk management as easy to use as modern web development, triggering a "Cambrian explosion" of on-chain applications and experiences.
Opportunities Always Arise from Unexpected Places
Looking ahead to 2026, we are excited about builders who dare to boldly experiment and push the on-chain economy forward. The directions mentioned above are areas where we have seen significant potential, but the most exciting projects often come from the most unexpected places.
If you are deeply engaged in any of the areas mentioned above or exploring something entirely new, feel free to reach out to the team members mentioned above — we look forward to connecting and learning about the future you are building.
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