Read Messari's 100,000-word report on 60 encryption trends for 2026 in 10 minutes.

This article summarizes from Messari's 100,000-word annual report, combining AI and human input, to outline the following 60 cryptocurrency trends for 2026.

1. If L1 does not have real growth, the encryption money will increasingly flow to Bitcoin.

2. ETH is still the “younger brother” of Bitcoin, not an independent leader. ETH has institutional and corporate support, can earn alongside Bitcoin, but still cannot stand completely on its own.

3. The correlation between ZEC and Bitcoin has dropped to 0.24, serving as a privacy hedge for Bitcoin.

4. Application-specific currencies (such as Virtuals Protocol, Zora) will become an emerging trend in 2026.

Take Virtuals Protocol as an example to introduce application-specific currencies:

• When users create an AI agent, a token exclusive to the agent will be issued.
• All proxy tokens are paired with the platform token VIRTUAL (to buy proxy tokens, you need to use VIRTUAL, providing liquidity).
• As the platform becomes more popular, AI agents become more useful, and the demand for VIRTUAL increases, it has become the “dedicated currency” of this ecosystem.

5. Stablecoins: From speculative tools to America's “currency weapon.” The GENIUS Act (passed in 2025), the first federal regulation on stablecoins in the United States, transforms stablecoins from encryption toys into tools of U.S. monetary policy.

6. Tether may continue to dominate the stablecoin market in developing countries, while developed countries' markets are being seized by large institutions. Tether's profits are soaring, with a valuation approaching $500 billion. JPMorgan, Bank of America, Citibank, PayPal, Visa, Google, and others are all entering the stablecoin space or building infrastructure.

7. Cloudflare and Google are building stablecoins and payment protocols specifically for AI proxy trading, preparing to enter the future world of AI automatic spending.

8.2026 interest rate decline, yield-type stablecoins (such as lending interest rate spreads, arbitrage, GPU collateral loans) will explode (such as Ethena's USDe).

9. Tokenization of Real-World Assets (RWA) will bring trillions of assets on-chain in the future. The total scale of RWA will reach $18 billion by 2025, mainly in government bonds and credit. DTCC (the US securities clearing giant) has been approved by the SEC to tokenize US securities. Most deployments are on Ethereum (64%), but institutions may use private chains.

10. Ethereum: The “settlement hub” for institutions and big money. Ethereum is still the most reliable “settlement layer.”

11. Ethereum L2 has taken on most of the transactions, but the token performance is poor. Base has the strongest income, accounting for 62% of L2. Arbitrum Defi is the strongest.

12. Solana: The King of Retail and Speculation Solana continues to dominate retail trading, spot volume, and the memecoin craze.

In 2026, Ripple aims to transform XRPL into an “institutional DeFi-friendly chain” by adding various compliance features at the underlying layer.

14. Stellar will focus on stablecoins and payment applications in 2026 (with extremely low fees of $0.00055 per transaction, ready-made wallets, global fiat channels, and bulk payment platforms).

15. Hedera aims to be a “regulated enterprise infrastructure backbone”, focusing on two directions: RWA tokenization and verifiable AI.

16. BNB Chain directs 290 million users from Binance. Binance Alpha continues to be the “new project incubator,” prioritizing the promotion of BNB Chain.

17.TRON will still be the king of USDT transfers in emerging markets. TRON is one of the most profitable “businesses” in the encryption circle, with annual revenue exceeding $500 million. The newly emerging “stablecoin-specific chains” want to take its business, but TRON has a deep moat; as long as it maintains its dominant position in USDT and expands its global influence, it will still be a core pillar of the stablecoin economy in 2026.

18. Sui evolves from a “high-performance execution chain” to a “full-stack unified platform.”

19.Aptos aims to be the core engine for “tokenizing all assets and enabling 24/7 global trading without intermediaries.”

20. Near Intents as the underlying layer for cross-chain + AI agents.

21. Polygon is entering the payment track, integrating stablecoins, merchant processors, and consumer finance. The monthly transfers of the payment app have exceeded 1 billion (64 billion for the year), with a target of 2.5 to 3 billion per month by 2026.

22. The stablecoin public chains Arc and Tempo compete with SWIFT (international wire transfer), ACH (Automated Clearing House), and payment processors, aiming to bring large offline payments onto the blockchain.

Arc seizes large institutional money (banks, FX in capital markets, tokenized assets).

Tempo seizes money from the Stripe ecosystem (merchants, consumer payments, salary payments).

Arc may become the default track for institutional foreign exchange, tokenized assets, and B2B payments (if Circle expands to institutional and regulatory-friendly). Tempo may become the best track for merchants to send money and cross-border settlements.

23. Chainlink continues to be the leader of DeFi oracles, but institutional data services will become the new main source of income for oracles (the traditional financial data budget is enormous, with Bloomberg earning 10.6 billion a year).

24. Privacy cross-chain becomes a focus: THORChain adds Monero (exchanging transparent coins for privacy coins), Chainlink Confidential Compute (sensitive institutional data securely computed and then uploaded to the chain).

25.2026 DEX will integrate services such as wallets, robots, and launch pads. The three main profitable businesses of DEX:

• Wallet: Phantom earned 9.46 million in November (rate 0.95%), with a volume of less than 1 billion but surpassing most DEX.
• Trading Robot: Axiom fee rate 1.15%, earned 18.74 million.
• Asset Issuance (Launchpad): Sell exclusive new coins.

pump.fun

A rate of 0.51% earns 34.92 million, Four.meme

1.05% (Binance endorsement).

2026DEX will integrate wallets, bots, launchpads, and DEX bundles to control the entire trading process, not just earn transaction fees. Possible new revenue streams: subscriptions, advanced execution fees.

26. Modular lending (such as Morpho) will surpass all-in-one lending (Aave), relying on RWA lending, high-yield stablecoins, and institutional distribution.

What are the advantages of modularization?

• There is a high demand for lending long-tail assets (small coins, RWA), and an all-in-one approach is risky, while modularization allows for the opening of independent vaults.
• Institutions and new banks love to isolate risks + custom parameters.
• Can be used as a backend for centralized exchanges and new banks (such as the collaboration between Morpho and Coinbase, attracting nearly 1 billion in deposits).

27. Stock perpetual contracts have become a new trend in encryption, with high leverage trading globally, bypassing offline regulation.

28. Exogenous yield stablecoins: The yield of stablecoins comes from real cash flows off-chain (such as private credit, infrastructure, tokenized real estate), not government bonds. More exogenous yield products (credit, real estate, energy, etc.) will be brought on-chain. Yield-bearing stablecoins will become the main collateral and savings tools in DeFi.

Successful examples:

USD.Ai: Government bond bottom + AI infrastructure (GPU collateral) loans, locked up 670 million, with a yield version yield of 9.7%.

Maple syrup USDC/T: Provide trading companies/market makers with super mortgages, lock in 4.5 billion, yield 5.5%.

29. Real Asset (RWA) collateralized lending. On-chain RWA lending relies almost entirely on home equity credit, with the Figure platform dominating (active loans of $14.1 billion). Another potential direction is merchant credit, where on-chain credit uses transparent cash flow for automatic assessment and lending, capable of serving merchants globally.

30. DeFi banks may become the mainstream distribution layer for encryption banks. Putting savings, trading, cards, and remittances all in a permissionless wallet is DeFi banking.

31. Decentralized AI exclusive high-quality data collection (active/passive) is the most profitable, decentralized computing network (DCN) finds a new path through wholesale + verification reasoning, medium open-source models + swarm intelligence/agents will thrive, AI and encryption feed each other, and DeAI enters the “enlightenment era”.

32. Cutting-edge Data: Opportunities in the Era of AI Data Scarcity

AI public free data is running out quickly, and there is an urgent need for high-quality data that is complex, multi-modal (images + text + video + audio) + exclusive cutting-edge tasks (such as robotics, computer agents). This presents a great opportunity for encryption companies to collect exclusive data on a large scale, which can be divided into two categories:

Proactive collection: Users specifically perform tasks to generate data (like an upgraded version of traditional labeling companies).

Passive collection: Users normally use the product, inadvertently producing “digital waste” (zero friction, large scale). Example of Grass: scraping multimodal data from idle bandwidth, revenue surging to 12.8 million in 2025 (large AI repeatedly buying).

In 2026, these “data foundries” will focus on a cutting-edge use case (not only collecting but also enhancing the learning environment/new benchmarks), and are most likely to become the most profitable part of decentralized AI.

In 2026, more companies are expected to publicly “collaborate with leading AI laboratories” and passively collect data.

Passive data collection differs from active (users intentionally completing tasks). Users generate data simply by using the product normally, with almost zero friction and the potential for massive scale. A prime example for 2025 is Shaga (DePIN network, turning idle gaming computers into distributed cloud gaming platforms, where users contribute computing power to earn rewards). In 2026, more companies are expected to publicly “collaborate with leading AI labs,” and traditional companies will also add encryption incentives + stablecoin payments.

In 2025, DeAI Laboratory has trained strong mid-sized open-source models using globally distributed heterogeneous GPUs. Prime Intellect, Nous Research, Gensyn, and Pluralis are already leading laboratories, and more products that could generate profits may emerge in 2026.

35.2026 Lightweight agency business may take off. X402 is on fire, ERC-8004 gives identity to the agency on the chain, Google AP2, OpenAI ACP (in collaboration with Stripe) promotes the agency payment protocol.

36.2026DeFAI (AI+DeFi) three possibilities:

• Vertical Integration: A dedicated platform that covers everything (research + trading + earnings + management), similar to Bloomberg terminals, where the data flywheel locks in users.
• Embed AI: The large interface (Phantom, Axiom, exchange) API connects to the best systems or acquires exclusivity.
• Modular Coordination: The aggregation platform coordinates thousands of specialized agents, allowing users to route to the best specialists using the “main agent”, like an agent app store.

37. Bittensor: The King of the Darwin Platform, attracting top global talent through competitive incentives. The ecosystem consists of a collection of independent subnets, each focusing on a specific AI task.

38. Smart Contract Security Dilemma: AI is a Double-Edged Sword

AI helps write code, making DeFi applications easier to deploy, but it also provides hackers with super tools to find vulnerabilities.

Smart contracts now incorporate AI defenses to prevent the large-scale weaponization of AI hackers. Security shifts from “pre-launch audits” to “continuous proactive defense.” Investment in AI defense will surge—institutions require a high-trust environment, and static audits are insufficient against dynamic AI adversaries.

39. The prediction market lacks AI and will integrate in the future.

AI is not about replacing human judgment, but rather a “new layer of participation” - continuously aggregating information, stabilizing liquidity, better calibrating, and reducing structural biases without changing the essence of the market. A mature prediction market requires a foundational predictive infrastructure, and AI agents are a necessary layer. Currently, there are protocols that incorporate AI for predictions, agent participation, and decision support.

40. Depin vertical integration (turning resources into complete products) is the most profitable, solving demand issues.

Most DePIN produces “goods resources” (computing power, bandwidth, storage), which are hard to sell for big money - interchangeable, low price, reliant on volume.

Winning Strategy: Vertical Integration - packaging resources into complete consumer/business products and selling directly to users (D2C). For example, Helium Mobile with an annual revenue of 21 million (first in DePIN).

41.2026 Depin Opportunity DePAI Data Collection:

AI needs real-world data (robots, autonomous driving, physical interactions), currently lacking 2-4 orders of magnitude (only tens of thousands of hours, needs millions/tens of millions). DePAI uses DePIN to incentivize global robots/sensors to collect data, faster than centralized methods. Companies like Hivemapper and DIMO are already making money.

42.2026 specially launched for new players in physical AI data:

• BitRobot: Robot data + computing power + dataset + human collaboration.
• PrismaX: Robot data + remote control operation (融1100万).
• Poseidon: High-quality long-tail data with permission.

They directly address the pain points of large AI companies (exclusive data), with no competitors. Issuing tokens + proving income, token demand could explode. In the long run: not only selling data, but also training exclusive physical AI models/operating systems (exclusive data, higher profits).

43. InfraFi has the opportunity to invest in traditional credit that is difficult to access on-chain, such as computing power and distributed energy. USD.Ai: lending money to AI startups to buy GPUs.

44.SEC believes that DePIN tokens are not securities, regulatory clarity will lead to an explosion in DePIN entrepreneurship.

45. The era of consumer-level encryption has arrived. Consumer-level encryption includes memecoins, NFTs, social, wallets, games, and more. The best applications embed “markets” into products (memecoin/NFT culture, predictive market information, social content, collectible trading).

46. Prediction Market: After the U.S. election, the trading volume of prediction markets surged from a post-election low of 1.7 billion to 9.2 billion in November. Sports and cultural trading volumes saw the fastest increase.

47. Financialized social is promising: Social is the biggest cake in consumer technology (creator economy to reach 480 billion in 2027). Encryption turns content, creators, and interactions into a tradable market. In 2026, Zora is more promising, with traffic from Coinbase.

48.2026 Strange RWA may become a new hotspot for consumer encryption. Trading cards, sports cards, TCG cards, whiskey, clothing, CS skins, figures, etc. will become popular on the chain.

49. Messari's self-developed L2 evaluation framework Disruption Factor, conclusion:

Arbitrum One First (69.5): The DeFi economy is sustainable, with net capital inflow and strong ecological income, not relying on a single blockbuster app. Companies like Robinhood, Franklin Templeton, and WisdomTree have settled in.

Base Second (67.1): Coinbase traffic diversion, user/transaction/revenue/narrative all lead, attracting DeFi and consumer apps.

Stablecoins enter daily life: In 2026, major platforms (such as Remitly, Western Union, etc.) will launch stablecoins, with supply doubling to over 600 billion. Exclusive coins on multiple platforms (USDH, CASH, PYUSD) will compete for market share, and stablecoins will become part of billions of people's daily lives.

51. Morpho Seizes Aave Lending Share: Morpho's modularity and risk isolation have collaborated with Coinbase and Revolut, making it more suitable for institutions and new banks in 2026, seizing Aave's share.

52. After memecoins, altcoins with strong fundamentals have a chance of reversal.

53. Use prediction markets to price TGE: The 2026 prediction market serves as a direct market for institutions/users to price risks, hedge, and obtain real-time information.

54.2026 is the (stock) perpetual contract year: traditional and encryption depth intersect, perp DEX benefits the most. Hyperliquid has exceeded 28 trillion in volume, and HIP-3 allows for easy listing of new assets. Stock perps are simple, available in all time zones, high leverage, and free from regulatory friction, attracting new users, better than 0DTE options. 2026 may become a new killer application in encryption, also catching the attention of traditional finance.

The biggest winner in 2026 is the wallet: all roads lead to the wallet, encryption can seize this wave (products that traditional markets don't have): perpetual + prediction market, these products are all aggregated in the wallet APP, the wallet is closest to the user. In 2026, the wallet will add more (traditional financial tools), becoming the main interface for the financial activities of the majority.

56. Smart money will look for more “lock-up + hedging” strategies in 2026 to scale up DeFi cash flow.

“Smart Players”: Lock veAERO in Aerodrome (get 31% weekly return) while opening an equivalent perpetual short position in Hyperliquid (earn 11% funding fee). Total return is 31% + 11% = over 40%. This is not about betting on direction, but about synthetic yield engineering: hedging away price volatility, only earning the real cash flow of the protocol (transaction fees + bribes).

Below 57.2026, the four major tracks will accelerate:

• On-chain infrastructure embeds more real finance (payments, lending, settlement).
• Tokenize traditional assets, the boundaries of asset categories are blurred.
• Encryption company IPOs are numerous.
• Development of financial “super App”: wallet + on-chain track, integrating stocks, payments, and credit.

58.2026 encryption sentiment will improve

59. Bitcoin continues to be regarded as “digital gold,” with its price fluctuations positively correlated with the total amount of stablecoins (the more stablecoins there are, the more expensive Bitcoin becomes).

60. Altcoins (especially L1 tokens) are no longer “the leveraged version of Bitcoin,” but are like high-growth tech stocks, relying on adoption, fees, and applications, many of which will fall to reasonable valuations.