Original Article Title: Coinbase Ventures: Ideas we are excited for in 2026

Original Source: Coinbase Ventures Team
Original Translation: Azuma, Odaily Planet Daily

TL;DR

In the spirit of open collaboration, we are sharing the team's most anticipated concepts in asset tokenization, professional trading platforms and terminals, next-gen DeFi, and AI + robotics. We are actively seeking suitable teams to invest in these categories. If you are building in these areas, we are eager to engage.

Preparing for 2026

The forefront of the crypto space evolves every year. In 2025, we witnessed the reshaping of stablecoin infrastructure in the payment sector, cross-chain proof compressing settlement times from days to instant, the prediction market breakthrough gaining mainstream adoption, and new DEX models enabling "everything on-chain transactions." These achievements have opened up new exploration space for ambitious teams working tirelessly to build the next major breakthrough in the crypto space. Contrasting the current market conditions with the beginning of the year, you'll find deeper liquidity, smarter privacy, more real interoperability, and on-chain "rails" complementing AI. Regardless of how price charts fluctuate, we remain confident in the future's development.

Below are the concepts our team is most excited about entering 2026, answering a frequently asked question: "What should I build next?" We believe the following categories will be where the next significant breakthrough company or protocol emerges, which are also the areas we are actively seeking to invest in.

RWA Perpetual Contract—Perpetual Contractualization of Everything

This Section's Author: Kinji Steimetz (@kinjisteimetz)

With on-chain real-world assets (RWA) sparking interest once again, investors are seeking new forms of risk exposure, and perpetual contracts—the crypto space's most battle-tested trading product—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 evolving in two main directions. First is the introduction of investment opportunities in unique assets onto the chain, where perpetual contracts do not require holding the underlying asset, allowing the market to form around almost anything, enabling the "perpetualization of everything" from private company equity to economic data releases; second is as the crypto space increasingly intertwines with macro markets, a more sophisticated group of traders is seeking to express broader views beyond just being long digital assets, which will drive demand for on-chain macro asset investment opportunities, allowing traders to hedge or position themselves using tools pegged to oil, inflation breakevens, credit spreads, volatility, and more.

Professional Trading Platforms and Trading Terminals

· Alternative Prop AMM

Section Author: Kinji Steimetz (@kinjisteimetz)

The rise of perpetual contract DEXes, application-specific chains, and Rollups has highlighted the importance of market structure design in building sustainable trading platforms, particularly in safeguarding liquidity providers from malicious order flow. While these newer environments can embed such protection mechanisms directly at the base layer, replicating similar structures on a general chain (such as the Ethereum mainnet) remains highly challenging unless significant protocol upgrades are undertaken.

We are increasingly focusing on projects that can accelerate on-chain market structure development in a broader ecosystem. An emerging model is Prop-AMMs on Solana, where in this pattern, static resting liquidity can only be executed via an aggregator, completely isolating LPs from predatory order flow. This "proprietary-driven" approach holds the promise of significantly driving market structure innovation until improvements at the base layer arrive, and its potential applications go far beyond Solana's spot markets.

· Prediction Market Trading Terminals

Section Author: Jonathan King (@jonathankingvc)

Prediction markets have become one of the most mainstream consumer-facing crypto apps, truly bridging the gap from the crypto-native market to mainstream adoption. However, current prediction markets are facing similar early DeFi fragmentation woes—users need to juggle multiple interfaces, tools are limited, and liquidity pools are segregated. Prediction market aggregators are emerging, and we expect them to become the dominant interface layer, integrating over $600 million in liquidity currently spread across platforms, providing users with a unified view of real-time event odds across platforms.

You can imagine a trading terminal like this (the user interface is similar to Axiom, but specifically designed for smart contract events): 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 of DeFi

· Composability in the Perpetual Contract Market

Author of this section: Ethan Oak (@0xNoroc)

Perpetual futures are evolving from isolated trading venues into a composable DeFi market, opening up a whole new frontier of capital efficiency. Major perpetual contract trading platforms like Hyperliquid and Lighter are at the forefront of integrating with lending protocols, allowing users to earn collateral yield while maintaining leveraged positions.

With perpetual contract DEX monthly trading volumes reaching $14 trillion and growing at a rate of 300% per year, by 2026, we may witness protocols extending the utility of perpetual futures, enabling traders to hedge, earn yield, and leverage simultaneously without sacrificing liquidity.

· Collateral-Free Loans / Credit

Author of this section: Jonathan King (@jonathankingvc)

The collateral-free credit-based lending market is the next frontier of DeFi, with potentially groundbreaking models emerging by 2026 that combine on-chain reputation with off-chain data to unlock massive collateral-free lending.

The market opportunity is enormous, with the U.S. alone having a $13 trillion revolving collateral-free credit limit, and the crypto market is well-positioned to capture this slice of the pie through increased 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 the traditional banking system.

· On-Chain Privacy

Author of this section: Ethan Oak (@0xNoroc)

Blockchain is known for its transparency, but if users cannot maintain their privacy, widespread mainstream adoption may never be achieved. Institutions and professional traders cannot feasibly conduct transactions when their strategies are continuously exposed to competitors, and regular users also do not want their entire financial history visible to the world on the chain.

We see developers' efforts increasingly focused on privacy-preserving assets (such as Zcash) and DeFi applications (e.g., private order books, lending/borrowing, etc.) as well as privacy-focused blockchains designed specifically for payments. Whether based on networks built for privacy or through advanced cryptography on existing public chains (ZKPs, FHE, MPC, TEE, etc.), these tools allow blockchain to maintain verifiability while significantly reducing users' exposure to malicious actors.

AI and Robotics

· Robotics Technology and Biorobotics Data Collection

Section Author: Kinji Steimetz (@kinjisteimetz)

As AI continues to advance, the market is looking towards the next technological frontier, with an increasing consensus that robotics technology may define the next wave of innovation. While many teams are moving in this direction, a critical gap remains in training robots and embodied AI systems, namely that available datasets are still limited and fragmented.

Most notably lacking is fine-grained physical interaction data, such as grip strength, pressure sensing, multi-object manipulation (especially deformable materials like fabrics, wires, etc.). Although this challenge extends beyond the purview of the crypto industry, incentivized data collection models like DePIN (Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Network) offer a viable path to large-scale collection of high-quality physical interaction data, potentially accelerating the development and deployment of advanced robotic systems.

· Human Identity Verification

Section Author: Hoolie Tejwani (@HoolieG)

We are approaching a tipping point where everything you see on your internet screen will be increasingly indistinguishable from whether it originates from a human or AI.

We believe that combining biometric technology, cryptographic signatures, and open-source developer standards is crucial to establishing a "proof of humanity" solution, which will be essential in the new human-AI interaction paradigm. Worldcoin (our portfolio company) has been at the forefront of anticipating and addressing this issue. We are very supportive of multiple solutions coming together to tackle this increasingly complex challenge.

· AI for On-chain Development and Security

Section Author: Jonathan King (@jonathankingvc)

Smart contract development is about to have its 'GitHub Copilot' moment. In 2026, we are likely to see an AI Agent further lower the barrier to entry for on-chain development—non-technical founders could go live with an on-chain business in hours instead of months, with the Agent 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 accessible as modern web development, triggering a 'Cambrian explosion' of on-chain applications and experiences.

Opportunities Always Arise Unexpectedly

Looking ahead to 2026, we are excited for the builders who dare to boldly experiment and drive the on-chain economy forward. While the directions mentioned above represent areas with significant potential we have seen, the most exciting projects often come from the most unexpected places.

If you are deeply involved in any of the above areas or are exploring something entirely new, feel free to reach out to the team members mentioned above through a direct message—we are very excited to engage with you and learn about the future you are building.

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