The Crypto Sector in 2026: Transformation Between Institutionalization and Decentralized Innovation

Messari has recently published an in-depth analysis summarizing the main dynamics that will characterize the crypto ecosystem in the coming year. Combining AI methodology and human research, a fascinating picture emerges where the convergence between traditional finance and blockchain reaches new balances.

Bitcoin Remains the Anchor, but Ethereum Seeks Its Role

If alternative Layer 1s continue to lack substantial growth, crypto capital will increasingly flow into Bitcoin, consolidating its role as a reference point. Ethereum maintains a special position: it enjoys support from major institutions and companies, but remains strongly correlated to Bitcoin for price developments. Its leadership is not yet fully autonomous.

An interesting evolution is seen in some niche assets: Zcash has drastically reduced its correlation with Bitcoin (down to 0.24), positioning itself more and more as a privacy hedge for Bitcoin users.

The Explosion of Application-Dedicated Currencies

One of the most promising trends concerns native tokens of application platforms. Protocols like Virtuals Protocol and Zora are pioneering this model: when a user creates an AI agent, an exclusive token is issued. All these tokens are anchored to the main platform token (which provides liquidity), creating a “dedicated currency” within the ecosystem. The more the ecosystem grows and the more useful the agents become, the higher the demand for base tokens.

Stablecoins: From Speculative Tools to Critical Infrastructure

In 2025, the regulatory landscape underwent a historic transformation. The GENIUS Act represents the first US federal regulation on stablecoins, turning them from speculative toys into monetary policy tools. In 2026, stablecoins will effectively enter daily life: large international remittance platforms, payment providers, and financial institutions will start issuing them.

Total stablecoin supply is expected to double, surpassing $600 billion. Tether will continue to dominate emerging markets, while large institutional issuances will emerge in developed countries. Tether’s valuation is targeted at $500 billion, with high annual profits. At the same time, tech foundations are developing payment protocols dedicated to automatic transactions of AI agents, preparing for an era where machines will spend autonomously.

The New Frontier: Yield-Bearing Stablecoins

With the expected decline in interest rates for 2026, yield-bearing stablecoins will explode, such as USDe from Ethena. These products offer yields through lending spreads, arbitrage, and innovative GPU-backed lending schemes. Even more interesting are exogenous yield stablecoins, where returns come from real off-chain cash flows (private credit, infrastructure, tokenized real estate) rather than traditional government bonds.

Blockchain Layer 1 and Layer 2: Increasing Specialization

Ethereum consolidates its role as a “settlement hub” for institutions and large capital, remaining the most reliable settlement layer. L2s handle most transactions, but their token performance remains weak. Base leads in revenue (62% of total L2), while Arbitrum dominates the DeFi ecosystem with a durable economy, positive net capital flows, and strong ecosystem revenues.

Solana continues to reign in retail trading, spot volume, and memecoin mania. Other blockchains pursue specialization strategies: Ripple transforms XRPL into a “DeFi-friendly chain for institutions” with compliance features at the base layer. Stellar focuses on stablecoins and payment applications with extraordinarily low fees ($0.00055 per transaction). Hedera aims to become the “backbone of regulated enterprise infrastructure,” focusing on RWA and verifiable AI.

BNB Chain benefits from preferential rights to 290 million users of a major platform. TRON remains the king of USDT transfers in emerging markets, with annual revenues over $500 million. It evolves from a “high-performance chain” to a “full-stack unified platform.” Aptos positions itself as a central engine for global asset tokenization and 24/7 trading without intermediaries. Near integrates Intents as a base layer for cross-chain operations and AI agents. Polygon is strongly focused on payments, having already surpassed 1 billion transactions per month with a target of 2.5-3 billion per month in 2026.

Real Asset Tokenization: Trillions Enter On-Chain

Real asset tokenization (RWA) represents one of the biggest opportunities. In 2025, the total value reached $18 billion, mainly government bonds and credits. The US clearing infrastructure has received SEC approval to tokenize US securities. Ethereum hosts 64% of these assets, although institutions might prefer private blockchains.

New dedicated blockchains are directly competing with traditional payment systems: one targeting large institutional capital (banks, FX, tokenized assets), while the other targets the merchant ecosystem with consumer payments and salaries. Meanwhile, RWA-backed loans are growing, with Figure dominating the home equity loan market ($14.1 billion active). A promising sector is merchant credit, where on-chain transparency enables automatic evaluations and approvals at a global scale.

DeFi: From Vertical Integration to Modularity

Modular lending (like Morpho) is surpassing integrated lending (Aave), thanks to support for RWA loans, high-yield stablecoins, and institutional distribution. The modular model allows creating independent vaults for long-tail assets and enables institutions to isolate risks and customize parameters. Morpho already collaborates with major platforms, bringing nearly $1 billion in deposits.

In 2026, DEXs will integrate wallets, bots, launchpads, and other services into a single ecosystem, controlling the entire trading process. Main profit sources will include wallets (Phantom earned $9.46 million in November), trading bots (fee 1.15% with $18.74 million in earnings), and asset issuance (pump.fun generated $34.92 million with a 0.51% fee).

DeFi banks will emerge as the primary distribution layer, integrating savings, trading, cards, and remittances into a permissionless single wallet. Perpetual contracts on stocks are becoming a new crypto trend, enabling high-leverage stock trading globally around regulations. Hyperliquid has already surpassed $28 trillion in volume, with mechanisms allowing easy addition of new assets.

Decentralized AI: Data Collection and Distributed Computing

High-quality data collection for decentralized AI is the most profitable opportunity at the intersection of AI and crypto. Public AI data is nearing exhaustion, creating an urgent need for complex and multimodal data (images, text, video, audio) for advanced tasks like robotics and autonomous systems.

Decentralized compute networks (DCN) with specialized compute subnets are finding new ways through wholesale agreements and inference validation. Platforms like Bittensor lead this space as “the king of Darwinian platforms,” using competitive incentives to attract global talent. DeAI labs have already trained powerful open-source models using distributed heterogeneous GPUs worldwide.

Data collection can occur actively (users perform specific tasks) or passively (users generate “digital exhaust” during normal use with almost zero friction). Projects like Grass are collecting multimodal web data and project revenues of $12.8 million in 2025. In 2026, new players dedicated to physical AI data (for robotics and remote operations) will directly address the pain points of large AI companies.

In 2026, three main DeFAI models will be launched: vertical integration (all-in-one platforms with search, trading, yield, management), embedded AI (large interfaces integrating the best APIs), and modular coordination (platforms coordinating thousands of specialized agents).

The Crypto Consumer Boom

The crypto consumer era includes memecoins, NFTs, social finance, advanced wallets, and gaming. The most successful applications integrate the “market” directly into the product. Predictive markets saw volumes grow from $1.7 billion to $9.2 billion between November, with particular acceleration in sports and culture.

In 2026, “exotic” RWA could become the new trend: collectibles, sports cards, trading card games, whiskey, apparel, and other rarities will enter massively on-chain. Social finance remains promising as the creator economy is projected to reach $480 billion by 2027.

Wallet: The Critical Contact Point

In 2026, the wallet will emerge as the biggest winner in the crypto ecosystem. All roads lead to the wallet: it is the closest point of contact to the user. Wallets will integrate perpetuals on stocks, predictive markets, yield-bearing stablecoins, and will become the main interface for most people’s financial activities. This is an opportunity missing in traditional markets.

“Smart Money” Strategies and Yield Engineering

In 2026, sophisticated capital will increasingly seek “staking + hedging” strategies. smart players will broadly harvest DeFi cash flows through synthetic yield engineering: they hedge price volatility and earn solely from the protocol’s real cash flow (fees and incentives).

Four Accelerating Sectors

2026 will see four sectors accelerate significantly: on-chain infrastructure will integrate more real finance (payments, loans, regulations); traditional asset tokenization will continue with increasingly blurred boundaries between asset classes; crypto company IPOs will increase; “super apps” will emerge, integrating wallets, on-chain rails, stocks, payments, and credit.

Final Outlook

Crypto sentiment will improve markedly in 2026. Bitcoin will continue to serve as “digital gold,” with its price positively correlated to the total stablecoin supply. Altcoins will no longer be “leveraged versions of Bitcoin,” but will resemble high-growth tech stocks, based on real adoption, generated fees, and application ecosystems. Many will fall to more rational valuations, reflecting underlying fundamentals rather than pure speculation.