Top 60 Trends in the 2026 Crypto Market: Who Are the Real Winners?

Messari’s newly released million-word annual report combines AI and human analysis to summarize 60 key trends. We dissected this heavyweight document and uncovered several unexpected truths.

Chapter 1: Power Reshuffle Between L1 and L2

Bitcoin’s Attractiveness vs Ethereum’s Dilemma

If L1 lacks genuine growth, more crypto funds will flow into Bitcoin. This is not prophecy but capital logic—although Ethereum has institutional and corporate support, it remains essentially “Bitcoin’s little brother,” unable to stand alone.

The comparison is even harsher: ZEC’s correlation with Bitcoin has fallen to 0.24, becoming a privacy hedge for Bitcoin; Ethereum’s story has been fully told.

L2 Has Taken Most Transactions, but Tokens Still Struggle

Arbitrum One ranks first (Disruption Factor 69.5): DeFi economy persists, net capital inflow remains stable, ecosystem revenue is strong, and it doesn’t rely on a single app. Robinhood, Franklin Templeton, WisdomTree have entered.

Base ranks second (67.1): Thanks to Coinbase’s endorsement, it leads comprehensively in users, transaction volume, revenue, and narrative, while also attracting DeFi and consumer apps.

Base generates the largest revenue (62% of total L2 income), but Arbitrum remains the strongest in DeFi.

Solana Dominates Retail and Speculation

Solana still rules retail trading, spot trading volume, and memecoin frenzy. This is not just a chain issue but also user psychology—high speed, low fees, high volatility—perfectly satisfying retail investors’ risk appetite.

Chapter 2: The Big Show of Stablecoins and Payment Tracks

From Speculative Tools to USD Weapons

In 2025, the US passed the GENIUS Act, establishing federal regulations for stablecoins for the first time, transforming them from crypto “toys” into tools of US monetary policy.

Tether will still dominate emerging markets, but developed markets will be divided among large institutions—JPMorgan, Bank of America, Citibank, PayPal, Visa, Google—all entering, with Tether’s valuation heading toward $50 billion.

Yield-Generating Stablecoins Will Explode

In 2026, interest rates will decline, but yield-generating stablecoins (arbitrage, lending interest spreads, GPU collateralized loans) will surge against the trend. Ethena’s USDe has become a benchmark.

Core logic of USDe and similar products: no longer relying on US Treasury yields but capturing multi-ecosystem cash flows—AI infrastructure, lending markets, real assets collateralization—marking a new phase of “compound growth” in DeFi.

Payment Public Chains: Challenging SWIFT’s New Order

Ripple will turn XRPL into an “institution-friendly DeFi chain” with added compliance features at the base layer in 2026.

Stellar focuses on stablecoins and payment applications (super low fee of $0.00055 per transaction, plug-and-play wallets, global fiat channels, bulk payment platforms).

Arc and Tempo are competing head-to-head with SWIFT, ACH, and payment processors—Arc targets large institutional fund flows (banks, forex, RWA, B2B payments), while Tempo aims at Stripe-like ecosystems (merchants, consumer payments, payroll).

Polygon is shifting toward payments, with monthly transfer applications exceeding 1 billion (annualized 64 billion), aiming for 2.5-30 billion per month in 2026.

Chapter 3: RWA and DeFi’s New Ecosystem

From 180 Million to Trillions in Leap

In 2025, RWA’s total scale reached $1.8 billion, mainly government bonds and loans. DTCC (US securities clearing giant) received SEC approval to tokenize US securities.

64% of deployments are concentrated on Ethereum, but institutions prefer private chains for risk isolation and parameter customization.

Loans Shift from “Integrated” to “Modular”

Morpho’s secret to surpass Aave: modular loans, independent risk isolation, institutional-grade customization. It has partnered with Coinbase, attracting nearly $1 billion in deposits.

Why does modularity win? Long-tail assets (small coins, RWA) require loans, which integrated platforms dare not touch; institutions want risk isolation and parameter tuning; Morpho can serve as backend for new banks and CEXs.

Two Paths for RWA Lending

One is real estate mortgage loans (led by Figure, with active loans of $14.1 billion); the other is merchant loans (automated blockchain-based assessment and issuance of transparent cash flow-based loans serving global merchants).

High-Yield Stablecoins Become DeFi’s “Deposits”

USD.Ai: US Treasury + AI infrastructure loans (GPU collateral), $670 million locked, yield 9.7%.

Maple Syrup USDC/T: Over-collateralized loans to traders and market makers, $4.5 billion locked, yield 5.5%.

Yield no longer comes from US Treasuries but from real off-chain cash flows (private credit, infrastructure, tokenized real estate)—marking DeFi’s transition from “speculation” to “production” stage.

Chapter 4: The Endgame of AI and DePIN

Data Becomes the New Oil, DePIN Reaps Dividends

Decentralized AI (DeAI): The real money is in high-quality data collection (active/passive) and decentralized compute networks (DCN). Medium open-source models, crowd intelligence, and agents will become mainstream.

Passive data collection differs from active—users generate data automatically when using products, frictionless and at massive scale. Grass uses idle bandwidth to collect multimodal data, earning $12.8 million in 2025 (repeat purchases by large AI).

In 2026, these “data factories” will focus on single high-end application scenarios (not just collection but also reinforcement learning environments, redefining benchmarks), becoming the most profitable part of DeAI.

New DePAI Players Rise in 2026

BitRobot, PrismaX, Poseidon and other newcomers focus on physical-world AI data—robot data, computing power, datasets, manual annotation.

This is the pain point for big AI companies (scarcity of proprietary data, needing only a few thousand hours vs. millions)—zero competition, token issuance + income proof, potential explosion in token demand.

Long-term vision: not only selling data but also self-training physical AI models and OS systems (data exclusivity + profit doubling).

Bittensor as the Darwinian Platform King

Bittensor attracts global talent through competitive incentives. Its ecosystem consists of multiple independent subnetworks, each focusing on a specific AI task.

Three Possibilities for DeFAI

Vertical integration: one-stop platform (research + trading + revenue + management), like Bloomberg Terminal.

Embedded AI: large interfaces (Phantom, Axiom, exchanges ) via API integration with top systems or exclusive partnerships.

Modular coordination: platform aggregating thousands of specialized agents, users connect via a “main agent” to the best experts, like an app store.

Chapter 5: Consumer Crypto and Future Entry Points

New Forms of Memecoin, NFT, and Social

Consumer crypto includes memecoin, NFT, social, wallets, gaming, etc. The best applications will embed “market” features into products—memecoin culture, NFT info, prediction market data, social content, collectibles trading.

Financialized Social Has Huge Imagination

Social is the biggest cake in consumer tech (creator economy to reach $480 billion by 2027). Crypto turns content, creators, and interactions into tradable markets. In 2026, Zora is particularly noteworthy (supported by Coinbase).

Atypical RWA Could Become Hotspots

Collectible cards, sports cards, TCG, whiskey, clothing, CS skins, figurines, etc., will become popular on blockchain.

Wallets Become the Biggest Winner

By 2026, all roads lead to wallets—perpetual + prediction markets will be integrated into wallets. Wallets are closest to users and can offer products that traditional finance cannot.

Wallets will also incorporate traditional financial tools, becoming the main financial interface for most people.

Prediction Markets Shift from Election Hype to Sports and Culture

Post-US elections, trading volume surged from a low of 1.7 billion to 9.2 billion in November, with sports and culture growing fastest.

In 2026, prediction markets will serve as real-time risk pricing, hedging, and information markets for institutions.

Chapter 6: Four Major Accelerations in 2026

Four Main Tracks Accelerate Integration

On-chain infrastructure integrates more real finance (payments, lending, settlement).

Traditional asset tokenization blurs asset class boundaries.

Crypto IPO wave.

Rise of “super apps”: wallets + on-chain infrastructure, integrating stocks, payments, and credit.

New Playbook for Smart Capital: Yield + Hedging

“Smart money” will pursue large-scale “staking + hedging” strategies in 2026, aggregating DeFi cash flows.

Example: Aerodrome’s veAERO lock-up yields 31% weekly, while simultaneously opening an equal amount of inverse perpetuals on Hyperliquid (earning 11% financing fee). Total yield >40%.

This is not a directional gamble but a comprehensive yield engineering—hedging price volatility and earning only protocol real cash flows (fees + bribes).

Perpetual Stocks Will Be the Killer App of 2026

Deep integration of traditional and crypto, with the biggest beneficiaries being perp DEXs.

Hyperliquid has surpassed $280 trillion in trading volume; HIP-3 makes adding new assets easy. Perpetual stocks are simple, 24/7 trading, high leverage, zero regulatory friction—more attractive than 0DTE options.

2026 could become the new killer app in crypto, attracting traditional finance attention.

Bitcoin Still the “Digital Gold”

Price correlates positively with total stablecoin supply (more stablecoins, higher Bitcoin price).

Altcoins No Longer “Leverage on Bitcoin”

L1 tokens no longer mirror Bitcoin’s movements but resemble high-growth tech stocks, based on adoption, fees, and applications—many will revert to reasonable valuations.

How to use this report? The key is understanding who the winners in 2026 will be:

Institutional applications (RWA, modular DeFi, payment infrastructure); consumer entry points (wallets, prediction markets, perpetual stocks); data and computation (DePIN, DeAI); capital flows (from L1 to Bitcoin, from speculation to yield-generating protocols).

Remember Messari’s final advice: the crypto market in 2026 will improve in sentiment, but the true winners are those projects that find “cash flow” rather than “stories.”