Based on A16z's annual forecast, which crypto projects are worth paying attention to?

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Source: Stacy Muur

Translation: Ken, ChainCatcher

In mid-December, a16z released its annual “Grand Blueprint for 2026.” Below is a list of key points organized around the main arguments of their vision.

1. Reshaping Payments, Stablecoins, and Financial Infrastructure

Argument: Stablecoins will become the settlement layer of the internet, not just the settlement layer for cryptocurrencies.

The story of stablecoins has moved beyond proof of concept. Today, their annual transaction volume has reached trillions of dollars, and the question is no longer whether stablecoins are effective, but whether they can seamlessly connect with the real-world financial system.

a16z’s argument is crucial here: stablecoins are not just currency but an upgrade to ledgers. If stablecoins can coexist with existing systems, offering real-time settlement, programmability, and global coverage, banks and fintech companies won’t need to rewrite decades-old legacy software. This shifts the focus of value capture from issuance to distribution, compliance, and integration.

Who will win in 2026?

Embedded Payments.

Card Issuance (New Crypto Banks) and Wallets.

Bank-grade Compliance + APIs.

Global, Programmable Settlement.

Focus List:

Circle (USDC): Regulatory legitimacy + distribution + liquidity advantages. Focus: Payment APIs, bank integration, inter-agent usage.

m0: Zero-fee USDC issuance based on modular infrastructure. Worth watching: native L2 minting, stateless agents, browser-level stablecoin user experience.

Ether_fi: The hottest new banking competitor in 2026; offers yield through tokenized treasuries, cash-back, and seamless payments; connecting crypto and fiat growth.

Plasma: Marketed as the first neobank built entirely around stablecoins, targeting global users (especially emerging markets), to meet their daily financial needs supported by USD stablecoins.

Stablecoin (Bridge) | Stripe Integration: Infrastructure abstracting crypto layer for deposits and withdrawals. Focus: integration of regional payment rails.

x402 Ecosystem: Focus on advancing “agent-serving” and “agent-executed” programmable payments through native HTTP-level settlement.

2. RWA: Native issuance, not just tokenization

Argument: Tokenization alone is insufficient. To truly improve efficiency, funding sources must move on-chain.

The first wave of real-world asset applications mainly focused on tokenizing existing off-chain tools (like loans, government bonds, and credit products) and distributing them to crypto users. While this increased accessibility, it largely retained the inefficiencies of old processes: opaque underwriting, high service costs, slow settlement, and fragmented liquidity. In many cases, tokenization is just a new wrapper for old workflows.

a16z’s core insight is that the real advantage of cryptocurrencies is not copying traditional financial structures but reshaping the credit system from the ground up. When loans are initiated on-chain, underwriting logic becomes programmable, service costs drop significantly, and risks can be priced and monitored in real time. This is where crypto begins to evolve from just a distribution channel into a foundational financial infrastructure.

Who will win in 2026?

On-chain Underwriting

Transparent Risk Pricing

Regulatory-compliant Credit Mechanisms

Abundant Liquidity (often via Perpetual Contracts)

Focus List:

Centrifuge: On-chain credit rails for real-world assets; Focus: institutional trading flow and default performance.

Blackrock (BUIDL): Tokenized money market funds on Ethereum; Focus: inflow of funds into tokenized treasuries and adoption speed of traditional finance (TradFi).

Maple: Institutional lending with underwriter governance; Focus: credit limit expansion and net yield vs. default risk.

Plume: Composable credit infrastructure for programmable debt; Focus: custom underwriting logic and DAO use cases.

Pendle: Yield stripping of tokenized yields; Focus: RWA adoption rates in government bonds and private credit.

Ondo: Tokenized treasury and credit funds; Focus: compliant USDC to RWA pipelines and L2 expansion.

Backed: Regulated ETF and bond token wrappers; Focus: DeFi-native compliant rails.

3. The Internet Becomes a Bank (Smart Agents and Payments)

Argument: As AI agents begin autonomous trading, payments can no longer be an external system layered on applications. They must be internet-native: instant, programmable, and fully automated.

The key shift is from user-driven execution to intent-driven execution. Agents no longer click buttons or approve invoices; they recognize conditions, fulfill obligations, and autonomously trigger actions. In this model, traditional payment processes (invoicing, batch processing, reconciliation, settlement windows) are no longer operational details but structural bottlenecks.

Blockchain introduces a different paradigm. Smart contracts can achieve global final settlement in seconds. Emerging underlying technologies further accelerate this, making value transfer more responsive and composable: agents can immediately pay other agents for data, computation, or services upon task completion, with rules embedded directly in code, eliminating the need for intermediaries to enforce them. Money no longer operates as a separate layer but begins to function like network traffic, which the internet can natively handle.

Who will win in 2026?

Agent-native identities.

Programmable payment rails.

User experiences with no “human” intervention.

Focus List:

Catena: Identity and compliance infrastructure for AI agents; establishing “Know Your Agent” (KYA) standards. Focus: agent onboarding, enterprise integration.

Nevermined: Data marketplace infrastructure for autonomous agents; enabling permissioned inter-agent payments for access, computation, and services. Focus: executable data licenses, agent monetization flows.

KiteAI: AI-native agents with embedded payments and real-world task execution capabilities. Focus: intent-based automation, real economic throughput.

ASI: Open ASI + blockchain fusion layer; cross-agent collaboration and compute monetization. Focus: agent settlement standards, autonomous service economy.

EigenCloud (via EigenAI): Deterministic AI agents for decentralized policy execution and autonomous protocol operations. Focus: intent-driven finance, composable economic agency.

Fetch: Protocol enabling decentralized compute + service collaboration among multiple agents. Focus: on-chain task execution, measurable agent GDP.

x402 Implementation: Agent settlement, protocol-level payments, inter-agent transactions.

4. Privacy as the Main Moat

Argument: Privacy leads to user lock-in. Public blockchains commoditize users.

The core insight of a16z’s privacy theory is simple: the blockchain space has become interchangeable, but confidentiality is not. Performance, costs, and throughput are no longer persistent differentiators. If everything is public, users can freely migrate, liquidity can bridge instantly, and applications can compete in a zero-profit environment. Privacy breaks this symmetry.

Once users, institutions, or applications put sensitive data—such as balances, strategies, counterparties, identities, and metadata—into privacy-preserving environments, switching costs naturally arise. This creates a privacy network effect: the more activity within a private domain, the higher its value, but the greater the risk of boundary information leaks, increasing the risk of leaving.

Who will win in 2026?

Private execution environments.

Zero-knowledge-based data access control.

Default privacy protection, not just an add-on.

Focus List:

Aztec: Private smart contracts + ZK-native rollups. Focus: developer appeal, private DeFi primitives.

Nillion: Decentralized MPC for private computation; enterprise data hosting use cases as breakthrough signals.

Arcium: Confidential computing layer in the Solana stack; Focus: performance scaling and native Solana integration.

Aleo: ZK cloud computing platform with native tokens; enterprise zkCloud usage as a North Star metric.

Walrus and Seal: Key components of the Sui stack, enabling fully on-chain data and privacy.

Payy_link: Privacy-protecting stablecoin wallet combining encryption privacy and practicality, supporting gasless, fully private, and optionally compliant send/receive of stablecoins like USDC.

Zcash: Shielded transfers via ZK-SNARKs; Halo 2 launch and extendable programmable privacy are key.

Monero: Default privacy Layer 1 with ring signatures; robustness under surveillance pressure remains its core moat.

5. Security: From “Code is Law” to “Standards are Law”

Argument: Insufficient auditing cannot solve the problem. Runtime enforcement will become standard practice.

The past two years have made one thing clear: audit failures are not due to lack of capability but because audits are static, partial, and fundamentally unable to fully reflect dynamic systems. Today, protocols operate in adversarial environments influenced by maximum extractable value (MEV), composability, oracle delays, and incentive-driven extreme scenarios, often only after deployment and frequently under extreme market conditions.

a16z’s conclusion (widely shared in the industry) is that security must be elevated: from checking code correctness to enforcing system-level invariants that are absolutely unbreakable. This marks a shift from “code is law” to “standards are law,” where protocols explicitly define which rules must always hold (e.g., collateral limits, value conservation, solvency conditions, ordering constraints) and continuously enforce these properties, not just at deployment.

Who will win in 2026?

Runtime protections.

Formal specifications.

AI-assisted verification.

Continuous monitoring.

Focus List:

OpenZeppelin: Deeply integrated protocol runtime rule enforcement and upgrade security platform.

Trailofbits: Advanced security research firm moving toward real-time invariant enforcement via tooling.

SpearbitDAO: Research-driven audit collective launching continuous audit pipelines (vs. static snapshots).

Cyfrin: Smart contract security firm building educational pipelines and formal verification tools; increasing influence in modular L2 ecosystems.

Immunefi: Unified on-chain platform for bug bounties, audits, and AI-driven threat detection to protect crypto projects from exploits.

Startup companies in runtime monitoring.

6. Scaled Prediction Markets

Argument: Prediction markets evolve from niche betting venues to real-time information infrastructure of the internet.

The core shift pointed out by a16z is not merely “more markets” or higher trading volume but a restructuring of prediction market architecture. As blockchain costs decrease, oracle performance improves, and user experience friction diminishes, markets are no longer just about elections or sports events but serve as continuous signal extraction layers. Everything can be listed: macro data releases, protocol upgrades, regulatory votes, corporate actions, and even probability outcomes of long-tail events.

Liquidity is dispersed across thousands of micro-markets, but price discovery improves because information is no longer limited to polls, surveys, or centralized analysts.

Who will win in 2026?

Prediction markets capable of listing everything.

AI agents engaging in continuous trading.

Decentralized and probabilistic solutions.

Focus List:

Polymarket: Leading decentralized prediction platform on Polygon; over $1 billion monthly trading volume, dominant in crypto.

Kalshi: US exchange regulated by the CFTC; over $1.3 billion monthly trading volume, top app downloads in legal markets.

FractionAI: Claimed to be the first AI agent prediction market, where agents compete in transparent on-chain environments with real-time portfolios.

Opinion: High-growth event trading platform, over $700 million monthly nominal trading volume, making breakthroughs in crypto-native betting.

Myriad Markets: Decentralized event market infrastructure; over $10 million trading volume, active on-chain betting across various niches.

7. zkVMs and Verifiable Computation

Argument: Proofs leave the blockchain and enter the cloud.

The core turning point highlighted by a16z is not just a slight speed boost in zero-knowledge proofs but that zkVMs are crossing a threshold, making universal computation proofs no longer a luxury exclusive to blockchains but a feasible system primitive, thanks to significant reductions in proof costs (from about 1,000,000x to about 10,000x), GPU-native provers, and memory footprints suitable for production environments.

This unlocks a mechanism where ordinary CPU workloads (cloud jobs, backend services, financial models, machine learning inference, legacy enterprise code) can be executed once and verified anywhere, transforming trust assumptions from cloud providers, data pipelines, and off-chain execution into cryptographic guarantees rather than contractual promises, creating a world where correctness, not reputation, is the default security model of distributed systems.

Who will win in 2026?

RiscZero: General-purpose zkVM with Rust computation; a reliable leader in cloud-compatible proofs.

Succinct: SP1 zkVM (based on RISC-V/LLVM) for arbitrary Rust/LLVM code; focused on fast verification, lightweight clients, and off-chain data feeds, with GPU-native proofs (e.g., real-time proofs on 16 GPUs), precompilation for efficiency, and recursive proofs for on/off-chain use.

Brevis_zk: zk co-processors for querying on-chain/off-chain data; designed for generating modular proofs within applications.

Axiom_xyz: ZK co-processors for verifiable computation of on-chain/off-chain data; supports arbitrary expressive off-chain computations (e.g., historical queries) with on-chain verification of ZK proofs.

ZKML stack implementations: frameworks for verifiable ML inference via ZK proofs/SNARKs (e.g., ZKML, DSperse, JSTprove); optimized circuits for production ML workloads (e.g., GPT-2, neural networks), reducing overhead (proof/verification speeds up 5-22x).

8. Wealth Management Goes On-Chain

Argument: Active, personalized wealth management will become ubiquitous.

As assets—including yield cash, public stocks, private credit, and illiquid alternative assets—are tokenized natively, rebalancing is no longer a one-time event but a continuous process. This process is executed by smart contracts, responding to real-time changes in interest rates, volatility, and risk premiums, rather than quarterly meetings or advisor workflows.

AI-assisted asset allocation engines are increasingly playing a co-pilot role, translating user constraints into executable strategies; decentralized financial infrastructure technologies like automated vaults, layered yield products, and permissioned risk-weighted asset pools provide the mechanisms to implement these strategies without sacrificing compliance or capital efficiency. The result is not “smart robo-advisors” but programmable wealth, with portfolios that self-adjust along the risk curve—from tokenized treasuries to credit, from Beta to Carry, from liquidity to illiquidity—while settlement, custody, and reporting are abstracted away.

Who are the winners?

Auto-rebalancing.

Yield cash.

Tokenized private markets.

Focus List:

Veda: Modular vault infrastructure supporting real-time, strategy-based rebalancing across yield primitives; highly aligned with this argument.

Upshift: Permissioned vault platform with risk monitoring strategies and KYC access; partially aligned with compliant RWA access.

Midas: Tokenized treasury and BTC yield strategies with on-chain reserves proof; ideal for compliant, programmable cash flows.

Base: Coinbase’s L2 Base App integrating wallet, trading, social feeds, mini-programs, and on-chain yields (e.g., USDC APY); enabling seamless, abstracted wealth management via one-click DeFi and RWA access.

Morpho: Non-custodial lending vaults that automatically rebalance between P2P and pooled markets; aligned with programmable credit allocation and real-time yield optimization.

Infinit: AI-powered super app with strategies for one-click auto-yield, delta-neutral positions, cross-chain bridging/exchanging, and RWA-optimized agents; enabling self-adjusting wealth through multi-agent collaboration, aligned with programmable portfolios.

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