Source: Coinbase Ventures; Compiled by: Jinse Finance
Every year, the forefront of cryptocurrency is constantly evolving. In 2025, we witnessed stablecoin infrastructure reshaping payment methods, cross-chain proofs reducing settlement times from days to unprecedented levels, prediction markets breaking through barriers and gaining sustained mainstream adoption, and new DEX models realizing an on-chain market where "everything can be traded." These breakthroughs have ushered in a new era for ambitious teams working tirelessly to create the next major breakthrough in cryptocurrency. Comparing the current state of cryptocurrency to the beginning of the year reveals greater liquidity, improved privacy, stronger interoperability, and the synergy between on-chain infrastructure and artificial intelligence. Regardless of price movements, we remain confident in the future of cryptocurrency. Below are some of our team's most exciting ideas for 2026, and also answers to a frequently asked question: "What should I develop next?" We believe these areas will see the emergence of the next breakthrough companies and protocols, and we are actively seeking investment. If you are developing in these areas, feel free to connect with us. You can contact us via X private message. 1. RWA Perpetual Contracts – Contracts for Everything With renewed interest in on-chain RWA, investors are seeking new ways to invest. As the most mature trading product in the cryptocurrency space, perpetual contracts offer a faster and more flexible investment path than tokenization. Thanks to recent improvements in the infrastructure of perpetual contract decentralized exchanges (DEXs), RWA perpetual contracts create synthetic investment opportunities for off-chain assets through perpetual futures contracts. We believe this area is developing in two directions. First, bringing exotic asset investment opportunities on-chain: Since perpetual contracts do not require collateralized underlying assets, almost any asset can form a market, thus enabling the "perpetualization" of various assets, from private companies to economic data. Secondly, as cryptocurrencies become increasingly intertwined with macro markets, a more sophisticated trading community seeks to express opinions beyond simply going long on digital assets. This has spurred demand for on-chain macro asset investment opportunities, enabling traders to hedge or build positions using instruments linked to oil, inflation breakeven points, credit spreads, and volatility. — Kinji Steimetz
2. Specialized Exchanges and Trading Terminals
Alternative Prop AMMs
The rise of perpetual decentralized exchanges (DEXs), application-specific chains, and rollups highlights the importance of market structure design for building sustainable exchanges, particularly in protecting market makers from malicious traders. While these new environments can embed such protection mechanisms at the underlying level, replicating similar structures on general-purpose chains without major protocol upgrades remains extremely difficult. We are increasingly focused on projects that can accelerate the development of on-chain market structures within these broader ecosystems. Prop-AMM on Solana is one such emerging model, where idle liquidity can only be executed through aggregators, thus protecting liquidity providers (LPs) from predatory trading flows. This Prop-driven approach can significantly advance market structure innovation before underlying improvements and has potential applications beyond the Solana spot market. — Kinj Steimetz
Prediction Market Trading Terminal
Prediction markets have become one of the leading consumer-grade cryptocurrency applications, successfully crossing the chasm to mainstream adoption. However, today's prediction markets also face the same fragmentation problems as early DeFi. For example, users must switch between multiple interfaces that offer limited tools, and liquidity pools are isolated from each other. The emergence of prediction market aggregators promises to become the mainstream interface layer, consolidating over $600 million in decentralized liquidity and providing a unified view of real-time event odds across platforms. Imagine a trading terminal (similar to Axiom's user experience but for event contracts) equipped with advanced order types, filters/charts, multi-platform routing and position tracking, cross-platform arbitrage insights, and other specialized tools.
— Jonathan King
3. Next Generation DeFi
Composability of Perpetual Contract Markets
Perpetual futures are evolving from isolated trading venues into composable decentralized finance (DeFi) markets, opening up new avenues for capital efficiency. Major perpetual futures exchanges such as Hyperliquid and Lighter are leading the way in integrating with lending protocols, enabling users to earn collateral yields while maintaining leveraged positions. With perpetual futures decentralized exchanges (DEXs) reaching $1.4 trillion in monthly trading volume and growing by 300% year-over-year, by 2026, these protocols may further expand the uses of perpetual futures, allowing traders to hedge, earn yields, and use leverage simultaneously without sacrificing liquidity. —— Ethan Oak
Unsecured Lending/Credit
Unsecured credit money markets are the next frontier in DeFi, with breakthrough models potentially emerging in 2026 that combine on-chain reputation with off-chain data to unlock the potential of unsecured lending on a massive scale.
The market opportunity is enormous: the US alone boasts $1.3 trillion in revolving unsecured credit lines, from which cryptocurrencies, with their superior capital efficiency and global accessibility, are poised to profit. For builders in this space, the challenge lies in designing scalable and sustainable risk models. If successful, DeFi will truly become a financial infrastructure capable of surpassing the traditional banking system. — Jonathan King
On-chain Privacy
Blockchains are renowned for their transparency, but mainstream applications may be impossible unless users can protect their privacy. Institutional and professional retail traders cannot trade if they constantly leak their trading strategies to competitors; and ordinary users generally do not want their entire financial record exposed on-chain. We see developers working on privacy-preserving assets (such as Zcash) and DeFi applications (such as private order books, lending, etc.), as well as dedicated payment blockchains that prioritize privacy.
Whether these tools are built on dedicated privacy networks or overlaid with advanced cryptographic techniques (such as zero-knowledge proofs, fully homomorphic encryption, multi-party computation, and terminal encryption) on existing public blockchains, they enable blockchains to maintain verifiability while reducing the risk of users being exposed to malicious actors. — Ethan Oak
4. AI and Robotics
Robot and Humanoid Robot Data Acquisition
As artificial intelligence continues to develop, the market is beginning to focus on the next technological frontier, with a growing consensus that robotics may define the next phase of innovation. While many teams are working in this direction, a key gap remains in training robots and embodied AI systems: available datasets remain limited and fragmented. One major area of scarcity is fine-grained physical interaction data, such as grasping, pressure, or multi-object manipulation involving fabric, cables, and other deformable materials. While this challenge is not limited to the cryptocurrency space, incentivized data collection models similar to decentralized physical infrastructure networks (such as DePIN) can provide a viable framework for scaling the collection of high-quality physical interaction data, thereby accelerating the development and deployment of advanced robotic systems. — Kinj Steimetz
Proof of Humanity
We are approaching a tipping point where everything you see on connected digital screens will be indistinguishable between human origins and AI generation. We believe that the combination of biometrics, cryptographic signatures, and open-source developer standards is crucial for establishing a "proof of humanity" solution that can complement AI in new human-computer interaction models. Worldcoin (our portfolio company) has been at the forefront, anticipating and committed to solving this problem. We are happy to support multiple solutions to address this increasingly complex challenge.
On-Chain Development and Secure AI
Smart contract development is about to have its "GitHub Copilot moment." In 2026, AI agents may further popularize on-chain building: founders without a technical background can launch on-chain businesses in hours instead of months, while agents will be responsible for smart contract code generation, security audits, and continuous monitoring.
The opportunity lies in the emergence of proxy tools, which will make smart contract development and security/risk management as easy as modern web page building, potentially triggering an explosive growth in on-chain applications and experiences. — Jonathan King
Looking ahead to 2026, we are greatly encouraged by the many builders who are daring to experiment and drive the on-chain economy forward. These ideas reflect the enormous potential we see, but the most exciting projects often come from unexpected places.
Anais
Alex
Weatherly
Joy
Catherine
Kikyo