Coinbase Ventures has outlined the ideas it considers promising as we approach 2026. The fund sees growing interest in the tokenization of real-world assets (RWA), new exchange formats, DeFi, and solutions at the intersection of crypto and AI. The team noted that more developers are building complex products onchain, opening the way for new protocols and services.
Perpetual RWAs
The report states that interest in real-world assets is transforming. Investors are moving away from simple tokenization in favor of perpetual futures. This instrument provides faster and more flexible access to markets. Coinbase representative Kinji Steimetz sees two vectors of development here.
- The first is creating synthetic markets for any offchain assets. It will be possible to trade anything: from shares in private companies to economic data. Owning the asset itself is no longer necessary for this.
- The second is macroeconomics. Traders are becoming more sophisticated and want to hedge risks through instruments tied to oil, inflation, credit spreads, and volatility. The development of decentralized exchange infrastructure is making this a reality.
New Exchange Architecture
Protecting market makers from toxic flow is becoming a key task. The Prop-AMM model is gaining momentum on the Solana blockchain. In this model, liquidity is only available through aggregators, which saves providers from predatory strategies.
This approach stimulates the development of market structure on top of Layer 1.
A separate story involves prediction markets like Polymarket. They have become a hit but suffer from fragmentation, much like early DeFi. Jonathan King is betting on the emergence of powerful aggregators.
On November 20, independent researcher Jane Manchin Wong found hints in the Coinbase code regarding the creation of a prediction platform.
Hundreds of millions of dollars in liquidity are stored on such platforms. Users have access to professional terminals with a unified interface, complex orders, and the ability to arbitrage between venues in real-time.
Next-Gen DeFi
The futures market is beginning to integrate closely with lending. Protocols like Hyperliquid are learning to work with lending protocols. Such knowledge allows traders to earn yield on collateral while maintaining open leveraged positions.
Coinbase believes that by 2026 we will stop choosing between hedging, earning, and liquidity — all of this will work simultaneously.
Another big frontier is unsecured lending. The combination of onchain reputation and offchain data opens access to the US consumer credit market. And this is $1.3 T.
If developers create sustainable risk models, DeFi will be able to compete with banks.
In parallel, the demand for privacy is growing. Major players cannot expose their strategies, and ordinary people do not want to reveal their transaction history. Developers are actively implementing ZK technologies to create protected orderbooks and payment networks.
Robots And Artificial Intelligence
Physical infrastructure is starting to work for robotics. To train machines, giant arrays of data on interaction with objects are needed. How to grip items, how to work with fabric or cables — there is little information on this so far.
Experts at Coinbase see the solution in DePIN networks, which scale the collection of such data.
Against the backdrop of AI content dominance, identity verification is becoming critically important. Hoolie Tejwani points to the need for “proof of humanity” systems.
Biometrics and cryptography should help separate humans from bots. Projects like Worldcoin are already moving along this path.
Development itself is also changing. Writing smart contracts is shifting to AI agents. This will allow launching onchain businesses in hours, not months, and will make code more secure.
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