🧭 Four Key Areas in 2026
1️⃣ RWA Perpetual Contracts: Everything can be 'perpetual'
Direction One: Opening Markets for 'Exotic Assets'—private company equity, economic data, event outcomes… anything can be perpetualized.
Direction Two: On-chain Macro Hedging—traditional macro tools like oil, inflation expectations, credit spreads are becoming essential for crypto traders.
💡 Brief Review: Perp is the most mature product form in Crypto, RWA * Perp may give birth to new markets far beyond the current CeFi categories.
2️⃣ Specialized Exchanges and Trading Terminals
① Alternative Prop AMM is currently facing the issue of 'toxic order flow', making it easy for market makers to suffer losses. The Prop-AMM model has already emerged on Solana (liquidity executed only through aggregators, isolating LPs), and such innovations may arise on more chains.
② Prediction market trading terminal The prediction market has surpassed $600 million in liquidity, but the experience is fragmented (multiple platforms, dispersed liquidity). In the future, a 'Prediction Market version of Bloomberg Terminal' may emerge—aggregating market odds, supporting advanced orders/charts/cross-market arbitrage tools.
3️⃣ Next-generation DeFi: Composable, Uncollateralized, Privacy-focused
① Perpetual contracts + Composability Perpetual DEX is integrating with lending protocols, allowing users to earn yields on collateral while maintaining leveraged positions. Based on a monthly trading volume of $14 trillion, we may see more hedging, yield, and leveraged combinations by 2026.
② Uncollateralized lending In the traditional world, there is a $1.3 trillion uncollateralized credit market in the U.S. alone, and Crypto is expected to create a more efficient global credit system through the combination of on-chain reputation and off-chain data.
③ On-chain privacy institutions and individual investors are unwilling to disclose their entire transaction history. The privacy track is rising, whether it's privacy public chains, ZK technology, or TEE solutions, all of which could become key pieces of the next round of infrastructure.
4️⃣ AI × Robotics: The next frontier of integration
① Robotics data collection AI requires physical interaction data (grip strength, multi-object manipulation), but existing datasets are scarce. Incentive models similar to DePIN may drive the development of open-source robotics data networks.
② Proof of Humanity AI-generated content is rampant, how to prove 'you are human'? Biometric + encrypted signatures + open-source standards may become the new identity infrastructure.
③ AI for on-chain development and security The 'GitHub Copilot moment' for smart contract development is coming: AI can automatically generate contract code, conduct security audits and monitoring, allowing non-technical users to quickly build on-chain businesses.
🌐 Summary
Coinbase Ventures finally mentioned: the most exciting projects often come from unexpected places.
