8 Major Crypto Trends for 2026 — A Year of Full Restructuring in Industry Cycles, Tech Paradigms, and Regulation

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#CryptoTrends #SuperEx

As of today, it’s already December 2025. 2025 is about to pass, and 2026 is just around the corner. The SuperEx Research Institute brings you some forward-looking analysis and views, covering capital structure, regulatory frameworks, technical foundations, user profiles, and more.

Below, we summarize the 8 most noteworthy trends for 2026 — no mystical predictions, only structural changes.

 

Trend 1: National-Level Chains Officially Take the Stage

This year, the United States, Japan, and the UAE have already discussed the technical reserves for “national-level chains.” U.S. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell has even boasted that all U.S. assets will be on-chain within 2 years. With that kind of scale, it is naturally impossible to rely on existing public chains in the market — national-level chains are inevitable.

Japan and the UAE have always been in intense competition with the U.S. in the crypto industry, so 2026 will see the first truly implemented sample. The reason is simple: if the goal is to complete rollout + testing within 2 years, then 2026 will inevitably produce a live example, and countries like Japan and the UAE will certainly follow closely behind.

Once national-level chains officially enter the stage, we will inevitably see:

• public service chains
• interoperability between CBDCs and commercial bank off-chain systems
• asset registration and tax systems running on-chain
• data that is verifiable, auditable, and highly compliant

These chains will not necessarily be fully public, but they will deeply affect the on-chain migration of compliant assets and institutional capital allocation, making them one of the most capital-attractive tracks in 2026.

Trend 2: Prediction Markets Enter an Explosive Phase

Prediction markets have already become one of the most attention-grabbing focal points of this crypto cycle, especially as major institutions and even state-level enterprises begin to enter and build. Prediction markets are clearly moving toward the mainstream ecosystem.

Recent examples:

• Polymarket returned to the U.S. market in November, with sports betting as its first key focus;
• Trump Media & Technology Group will enter the predictive market business.

Both pieces of news signal the return and expansion of prediction markets, which will attract new capital (VCs, institutional traders), while also giving rise to more derivatives and data services based on market-implied probabilities (prediction indices, risk-hedging tools).

However, on-chain prediction markets still have a long way to go before they achieve true mass adoption, especially given the enormous gap that remains between on-chain and off-chain markets. Narrowing this gap will be the primary goal for the prediction market sector in the coming year.

Trend 3: 2026 Will Be the “First Year of Stablecoin Regulation”

From late 2025 to early 2026, the United States, the European Union, Japan, Singapore, the UAE, as well as regions like Hong Kong, will successively clarify:

• issuance thresholds (reserves, audits, licensing)
• rules for on-chain circulation
• interoperability between banks and stablecoins
• compliant wallet standards (KYC / KYT)

Stablecoins are the “monetary layer” of the entire crypto industry. Whoever controls stablecoins controls:

• the Web3 settlement system
• global on-chain payments
• DeFi collateral
• the speed at which the U.S. dollar expands on-chain

In 2026, stablecoin competition will no longer be a simple “USDT vs USDC” binary world, but a chaotic battle between national-level vs commercial vs industry-specific stablecoins.

For example:

• the U.S. is supporting RWA and on-chain dollar settlement
• Hong Kong and Singapore are pushing compliant stablecoins
• the UAE is trying to become the “on-chain settlement hub of the Middle East”
• CEX-native stablecoins are returning (exchanges want to reclaim monetary power)

The story of stablecoins will no longer be “issue a coin and make money,” but the digital reconstruction of the global monetary system.

Trend 4: RWA Becomes the Largest Capital Pool of 2026, and On-Chain Finance Officially Enters the Trillion-Level Era

By the end of 2025, RWA has already moved from a concept to actual transaction volume. At the current pace, 2026 will be the first year of full-scale expansion for on-chain financial assets, including but not limited to:

• U.S. Treasuries (T-Bills)
• corporate bonds
• real estate income rights
• commodities like gold and crude oil
• supply chain finance
• invoices and accounts receivable
• private equity (PE/VC)

The essence of RWA is: making global assets circulate on-chain like USDT. This is exactly why capital is pouring in like crazy:

• higher yields (T-Bill returns are steady and low-risk)
• faster liquidity than banks
• lower cross-border settlement costs
• exploding demand for programmable financial products

According to market forecasts, in 2026, the TVL of RWA could exceed 500 billion USD or even reach 1 trillion. This scale will change DeFi’s underlying logic:

• Past: driven by speculation
• Future: driven by real yield + expansion of on-chain settlement volume

Trend 5: On-Chain AI Becomes the New Main Storyline

Over the past two years, AI as a concept has been extremely active. Apps like ChatGPT and DeepSeek have emerged one after another. But you’ll notice that most of this competition has been concentrated among top-tier enterprises and at the national level in countries like the U.S. and China.

By the second half of 2025, however, things have slowly begun to change. Crypto-native teams have made huge progress in decentralized training and inference, moving step by step from theoretical design to testing and production environments.

Simply put, the on-chain AI boom in 2026 will no longer be “vision-level speculation,” but will enter the product-market fit (PMF) stage for real. In the past, AI mainly stayed in “conversation” and “generation,” with limited ability to actually execute tasks; meanwhile, Web3 lacked intelligent automation tools. Once the two are combined, they will form an entirely new type of digital lifeform: On-chain Autonomous Agents that can act, pay, and decide on their own.

This means that, for the first time, users can truly have an “on-chain assistant” that not only gives advice but also directly executes actions. Developers can deploy fully automated operational agents, bringing an “autopilot”-like efficiency revolution to the entire Web3 ecosystem.

More importantly, once AI Agents can independently hold and manage assets, Web3 will enter a new user paradigm:

From a “human-driven chain” era into an “agent-driven chain” era. The explosion of on-chain activity, the increase in gas usage, and the widespread adoption of AA (Account Abstraction) standards will all serve as strong proof of this trend.

In 2026 you will see:

• AI quants that trade autonomously
• AI that subscribes to services and pays fees
• AI that runs tasks and claims airdrops for users
• AI that automatically manages on-chain positions
• projects using AI for automated governance

This is not futurism; these are real commercial scenarios in the making. The power of the AI narrative in 2026 may rival that of “DeFi Summer” in 2020.

Trend 6: L2 Shakeout — Entering the Era of “Sustainable Business Models”

We don’t need to over-explain how hot L2 has been this year. 2024–2025 can be called the L2 explosion period: projects everywhere, OP vs zk camps battling, and capital frantically chasing.

But 2026 will see a key problem emerge: the vast majority of L2s have no revenue.

The reason is simple: transaction fees are so cheap they’re almost free, while OP, ARB, BASE and other top players capture the vast majority of transaction volume. This means ecosystem growth cannot keep up with subsidy burn, and MEV revenues are captured by the sequencer layer.

Therefore in 2026, we will see a revolution in L2 business models:

• DA revenue becomes the main track
• MEV earnings become transparent and protocolized
• modular blockchains capture more market share
• on-chain order flow becomes the key resource for L2s

L3s and AppChains will be reshuffled. L2s with real revenue will survive; those without revenue will either merge or form alliances. 2026 will be the “real money competition era” for L2s.

Trend 7: CEX Rise Again, Evolving into Super Apps + CeDeFi Financial Institutions

2023–2024 was the stage of DEXs. AMMs, perpetual DEXs, on-chain derivatives, and cross-chain liquidity all exploded. But from 2025 to 2026, a reversal trend has begun: users are returning to CEXs.

There are three reasons:

• gas fees are still a pain point
• the trading experience still cannot match CEXs
• CEXs are starting to “go on-chain” — moving toward CeDeFi

In 2026 you will see:

• CEXs launching on-chain transparent reserves
• RWA and local yield products built on user data
• their own L2 public chains becoming ecosystem gateways
• AI + exchange forming super recommendation systems
• wallets, cross-chain, DID, launchpads, and wealth management all integrated in one

CEXs will not die. They will morph and evolve, and may even become the “super entrance” of the entire crypto world.

Trend 8: Explosion of “Crypto × Enterprise” Demand — On-Chain Becomes Core Business Infrastructure

2026 will be the first true “Enterprise Web3” year for very practical reasons:

• cross-border settlement needs to be faster and cheaper
• supply chain finance needs traceability
• AI needs on-chain data sources
• enterprises need shared ledgers
• hybrid models of private chains + public chains are more mature
• RWA needs enterprise asset connectivity to on-chain systems

The core of Enterprise Web3 is not “coins,” but: DID, credentials, on-chain ledgers, and automated smart contracts. The driving forces include:

• banks
• financial institutions
• multinational corporations
• government departments
• AI companies

In 2026, there will be a large number of “no-token projects,” but on-chain users and on-chain assets will grow sharply. This will be the first time the industry shifts from being “retail-driven” to “enterprise-driven.”

Conclusion

2026 will not be like previous cycles that depended on:

• halving alone
• narratives alone
• liquidity alone

It will be a “structural ecosystem” formed by multiple overlapping factors:

• stablecoins entering global regulation
• RWAs going on-chain becoming reality
• AI pushing Web3 infrastructure upgrades
• CEX + L2 forming a new landscape
• enterprise-grade applications driving real demand
• the application layer is ushering in its first large-scale explosion

In 2026, it will not be just the crypto industry that changes — the entire digital finance world will complete a foundational iteration. The next giants, the next 1000x projects, and the next industry-wide explosion will all be bred within these trends of 2026.