Coinbase Ventures just named its four big bets for 2026. These aren’t random picks. They’re strategic investments in areas showing real momentum right now.
The firm’s blog post identifies Real-World Asset perpetuals, specialized trading infrastructure, next-gen DeFi, and AI integration as priority themes. Plus, each category addresses specific bottlenecks holding crypto back from wider adoption.
Let’s break down what these trends actually mean and why they matter.
RWA Perpetuals Skip the Custody Headache
Real-World Asset perpetual contracts solve a major problem with traditional tokenization. You don’t need to custody the underlying asset.
That changes everything. Instead of securing physical commodities or securities on-chain, perpetuals provide synthetic exposure through derivatives. So teams can launch markets for virtually any off-chain asset without dealing with custody requirements.
Coinbase Ventures sees two major directions for growth. First, on-chain macro exposure lets traders position around energy prices, inflation expectations, credit spreads, and volatility without touching traditional finance rails. Second, new market categories emerge for private companies, niche datasets, and alternative metrics that are difficult to tokenize directly.
The numbers back this up. RWAs grew from approximately $13.8 billion to around $36 billion in on-chain value this year. Meanwhile, the number of asset holders climbed to 550,194, up 7.58% just in the past month.
Here’s why this matters more than spot tokenization. Perpetuals form markets around anything without requiring teams to secure underlying assets first. That speed and flexibility beats waiting for regulatory approval and custody infrastructure.
Proprietary AMMs Are Eating Solana’s DEX Volume
Specialized trading infrastructure is Coinbase’s second focus area. Proprietary Automated Market Makers now dominate Solana’s decentralized exchange landscape.
These Prop-AMMs protect liquidity providers from harmful trading flows. According to Messari, they handled 13% to 24% of Solana’s total DEX volume throughout 2025. Even more impressive, they surpassed traditional AMMs in September for the first time.
Take HumidiFi. This single platform generated nearly 50% of all SOL-stablecoin DEX trading volume in September. That’s massive market share for one proprietary system.
Coinbase Ventures believes this prop-driven approach could advance market structure innovation faster than base-layer improvements. Plus, these models have applications beyond Solana’s spot markets.
Prediction market aggregators also show promise as a dominant interface layer. They could combine fragmented liquidity while offering tools currently missing from the sector. Think advanced orders, cross-venue routing, arbitrage insights, and unified analytics.
These trends signal genuine market sophistication, not just hype cycles.
DeFi Composability Reaches New Levels
Next-generation DeFi centers on deeper protocol integration and more sophisticated financial tooling. Perpetual platforms are beginning to connect with lending markets, letting collateral generate yield while backing leveraged positions simultaneously.
Monthly on-chain derivatives volume hit $1.4 trillion. So Coinbase expects more systems that let users hedge, earn, and leverage without fragmenting capital across multiple platforms.
Unsecured lending represents another frontier with huge potential. The US credit market alone stands at $1.3 trillion. But DeFi barely touches this space yet.
“Unsecured credit-based money markets are DeFi’s next frontier, and 2026 may see breakthrough models that blend onchain reputation with offchain data to unlock unsecured lending at scale,” Coinbase wrote in its blog.
The challenge? Designing sustainable risk models that scale. Success here transforms DeFi into genuine financial infrastructure capable of outcompeting traditional banking rails.
For wider institutional adoption, privacy becomes crucial. Coinbase Ventures highlighted cryptographic tools that enable confidential transactions, including zero-knowledge proofs, fully homomorphic encryption, multiparty computation, and specialized privacy chains.
These aren’t theoretical anymore. Real momentum is building behind privacy-preserving technologies that maintain transparency where needed while protecting sensitive transaction data.
AI Agents Need Crypto Incentives and Identity Systems
The final category expands beyond pure finance. Coinbase explores how crypto supports the next generation of AI and robotics.
Robotic systems face a critical shortage of real-world interaction data, especially for precision tasks or handling deformable objects. Crypto-native incentive models, similar to Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Networks, could collect the massive data volumes needed to train embodied AI at scale.
Proof-of-humanity protocols are gaining traction fast. As AI-generated content floods the internet, distinguishing humans from machines becomes essential. Coinbase believes a combination of biometrics, cryptographic signing, and open source standards will establish workable proof-of-humanity solutions.
Worldcoin, a Coinbase portfolio company, has been ahead of the curve addressing this problem.
AI agents will also become central to on-chain development. They’ll write smart contracts, audit them for vulnerabilities, and monitor deployed contracts continuously. This dramatically reduces barriers to launching new on-chain projects and accelerates experimentation across the ecosystem.
Here’s what really matters. These aren’t distant possibilities. Teams are building in these categories right now, and Coinbase Ventures is backing them with capital.
Why These Four Trends Beat Random Innovation
Coinbase’s selection criteria reveal their investment thesis. Each trend addresses specific technical or market bottlenecks currently limiting crypto adoption.
RWA perpetuals solve custody problems. Specialized trading infrastructure improves liquidity and protects providers. Next-gen DeFi enables genuine composability and institutional privacy requirements. AI integration positions crypto for coordination challenges in robotics and identity verification.
That’s strategic focus, not spray-and-pray investing.
The firm acknowledges that many transformative ideas emerge from unexpected directions. But these four categories reflect where they see huge potential based on current market signals and technical progress.
For builders in 2026, this roadmap offers clear signals about where major capital will flow. Teams solving problems in these areas can expect investor interest and ecosystem support.
The question isn’t whether these trends will matter. It’s whether other areas will emerge alongside them or if consolidation around these themes defines crypto’s next chapter. Either way, Coinbase Ventures just showed its hand.