Covering areas such as stablecoins, artificial intelligence, and privacy
Author: a16zcrypto
Translation: Blockchain in Plain Language
Shenzhen Stablecoins, AI, Privacy, etc. January 3, 2026
a16z recently released a list of "great ideas" that its various teams (Applications, U.S. Power, Bio, Crypto, Growth, Infrastructure, and Speedrun) believe technology developers may tackle in the coming year.
Here are some selected insights from members of the crypto team (and some invited contributors) regarding the outlook for 2026—focusing on themes such as Agents and AI, Stablecoins, Tokenization, and Finance, Privacy and Security, and Prediction Markets.
On Entrepreneurship
1. Trading is just a "transit station," not the endpoint of crypto business
Currently, it seems that almost every performing crypto company is shifting towards or has already shifted to trading business, aside from stablecoins and core infrastructure. But if "every company becomes a trading platform," how much space is left? A group of players competing in the same arena will dilute attention, ultimately leaving only a few big winners. This means that companies that rush into trading may miss out on more moats and opportunities to build lasting businesses.
While the pressure on founders to pursue immediate business growth is understandable, chasing short-term product-market fit (PMF) comes at a cost. In the crypto space, tokens and speculative dynamics often lead founders down the path of "instant gratification." This is another "marshmallow test." Trading is important, but it may not be the final destination. Founders who focus on the "product" itself may ultimately be the bigger winners. — Arianna Simpson, General Partner at a16z Crypto
On Stablecoins, RWA Tokenization, Payments, and Finance
2. Think about real-world asset (RWA) tokenization and stablecoins in a more "crypto" way
We see banks and asset management companies showing strong interest in bringing traditional assets like stocks and commodities on-chain. However, this tokenization is often "reification" (i.e., copying traditional models), inherently leveraging the characteristics of cryptocurrencies.
In contrast, synthetic assets like perpetual contracts (Perps) allow for liquidity in finance and are easier to implement, potentially being the most market-fit crypto derivatives. Additionally, we will see stablecoins transition from simple "tokenization" to "birth" in 2026.
Current stablecoins resemble "narrow banks" (holding only safe assets), and I believe this will not be a long-term mainstay. Future debt assets should start being created on-chain, rather than being generated off-chain and then brought on-chain. This can reduce loan servicing and later formatting costs, while improving accessibility. — Guy Wuollet, General Partner at a16z Crypto
3. Stablecoins initiate a bank deposit upgrade cycle and new payment scenarios
Most banks operate on software systems that may date back to at least the 1960s to 1990s, often using COBOL language and batch processing interfaces instead of APIs. This outdated core ledger hinders innovation.
Stablecoins, tokenized deposits, and on-chain bonds allow financial institutions to rewrite their legacy systems that have been in place for decades, enabling the development of new products. Stablecoins provide a way for institutions to innovate without the need for large-scale reconstruction of old systems. — Sam Brunner
On Agents and AI
4. We will leverage AI for appropriate research tasks
As model inference capabilities improve, AI is being used in a broader range of research fields, even capable of autonomously solving problems from the Putnam Mathematical Competition.
I anticipate that AI research will give rise to a "generalist research style": this style leans towards speculating on the relationships between thoughts and can quickly deduce from speculative answers. While this may sometimes produce "hallucinations," this non-linear collision of thoughts often opens the door to discovery. Operating a system composed of multiple reasoning agents will require better model interoperability and reasonable contribution compensation mechanisms, which is where cryptographic technology can help. — Scott Kominers, Research Team at a16z Crypto and Professor at Harvard Business School
5. "Invisible tax" on open networks
The rise of AI agents is imposing an "invisible tax" on open networks. AI agents scrape data from ad-supported websites, providing convenience while bypassing the revenue sources that support content creation (such as ads and subscriptions).
To network effectively, we need to deploy real-time, usage-based compensation mechanisms on a large scale. This means we need to protect our static licenses by transitioning to nano payments enabled by blockchain, automatically rewarding every entity that contributes information for agent tasks. — Liz Harkavy, a16z Crypto Investment Team
On Privacy and Security
6. Privacy will become the most important moat in the crypto space
Privacy is key to the global financial transition to on-chain, and it is currently lacking in most blockchains. Now, privacy itself is enough to move a chain.
More importantly, privacy creates "chain stickiness" (network effects). This is simple between public chains, but once privacy is involved, cross-chain becomes difficult because the cross-chain process can easily leak metadata (such as transaction time and scale). If users are on their own chain, they are less willing to take the risk of exposing their identity. This could lead to a "winner-takes-all" scenario, where a few privacy chains may capture a significant portion of the crypto market. — Ali Yahya, General Partner at a16z Crypto
On Other Industries and Applications
7. Prediction markets will become larger, broader, and smarter
The market has entered mainstream prediction, and by 2026, it will further integrate with crypto and AI. Beyond elections, we will see consistency in predicting various fields and complex events.
To handle the massive volume of contracts, we need decentralized governance and LLM front-end machines to adjudicate facts. Additionally, AI agents trading on these platforms can reveal complex social prediction signals. Prediction markets will not replace polls but will use cryptographic technology to prove that respondents are human rather than bots, thereby improving polls. — Andy Hall, Crypto Research Advisor at a16z and Professor at Stanford University
8. Cryptographic technology offers a new term outside of blockchain: zkVM
For years, the significant computational overhead caused by SNARKs (zero-knowledge proofs) has primarily been used for blockchains. But that is changing. By 2026, the overhead of zkVM provers will be about 10,000 times less, with minimal memory usage.
This is a "magic number": the load on high-end GPU motherboards is nearly 10,000 times that of laptop CPUs. This means that a single GPU can generate proofs executed by a CPU in real-time. This will open up the vision of "verifiable cloud computing": even if you run ordinary tasks in the cloud, you can obtain cryptographic proof of their execution correctness at a reasonable cost.
Article link: https://www.hellobtc.com/kp/du/01/6185.html
Source: https://a16zcrypto.substack.com/p/8-big-ideas-for-2026-and-more-trends
免责声明：本文章仅代表作者个人观点，不代表本平台的立场和观点。本文章仅供信息分享，不构成对任何人的任何投资建议。用户与作者之间的任何争议，与本平台无关。如网页中刊载的文章或图片涉及侵权，请提供相关的权利证明和身份证明发送邮件到support@aicoin.com，本平台相关工作人员将会进行核查。
