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The largest venture fund in the crypto market, a16z crypto, has published a list of promising directions for crypto projects in 2026. The company's website highlights specific topics ranging from AI agents and stablecoins to the privacy sector, media, and prediction markets. The ideas are presented by the fund's partners and guest authors.
a16z crypto is the largest market venture fund for investments in crypto startups from Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), a company founded in 2009 by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz (the number 16 represents the number of letters in the company name between the first (A) and the last (Z)). The fund's portfolio includes hundreds of crypto projects, ranging from established players to startups that are still building the infrastructure.
"The Internet is Becoming a Bank"
AI agents are autonomous intelligent systems based on artificial intelligence (AI) that can interact with the external environment, make decisions, and act without human intervention. A large part of the a16z report for 2026 is dedicated to them, covering a wide range of life spheres.
Experts believe such programs are changing the principle of the internet's operation, shifting it from manual control to autonomous task execution. This requires a new financial infrastructure where value moves as freely as information, which will be possible thanks to smart contracts and blockchain. a16z partners believe that next-generation protocols will make settlements programmable, allowing agents to instantly pay for data or computational resources without intermediaries.
"The internet doesn't just support the financial system... it is becoming one itself," wrote a16z partners Christian Crowley and Piers Carvolth.
Separately, a16z highlighted the importance of infrastructure such as the x402 payment standard, developed by Coinbase specialists for AI agents. However, experts believe the mass adoption of such mechanisms will lead to a need for digital identity systems. Furthermore, agents extracting data from websites undermine advertising business models. To preserve the open internet, new economic solutions are needed, such as blockchain micropayments that automatically compensate content creators for the value extracted by an agent.
Stablecoins
The transaction volume in stablecoins has reached $46 trillion, nearly triple the turnover of Visa and 20 times that of PayPal, writes a16z, and transferring a "digital dollar" now takes less than a second and costs cents. However, the key task for the crypto market remains integration with the traditional financial system through convenient on- and off-ramps.
This is precisely the gap that new startups are filling, creating bridges between stablecoins and familiar payment systems. In the future, this will open up scenarios for instant cross-border transfers, settlements for applications, and payment acceptance by merchants without bank accounts.
And if AI agents are the infrastructure layer, then stablecoins will act as the basic settlement layer for the internet. More importantly, wrote a16z partner Sam Broner, stablecoins do not require the elimination of "legacy systems" but complement already existing, reliably functioning systems that have worked for decades.
Tokenization and Predictions
Parallel to the development of stablecoins, interest in the tokenization of real-world assets (RWA) — stocks, commodities, and indices — is growing. However, crypto-native synthetic instruments such as perpetual futures, offering high liquidity and leverage, may prove more promising.
Perpetual futures (or perps) are the most popular trading product in the crypto industry. This method of 'tokenizing everything' was noted in the report by Coinbase's venture division, which indicated that instead of direct asset tokenization, they see prospects in transitioning specifically to futures instruments on the blockchain.
However, a16z noted the critical importance of creating and developing credit infrastructure in this area, where protocols need to create debt assets directly on the blockchain. And the collateral for such debts will lie in the sector of real assets.
"The most difficult task here will be compliance with regulatory requirements and standardization, but developers are already working on solving these problems," wrote a16z's chief cryptocurrency partner, Guy Wuollet.
Closely related to the field of tokenization are prediction markets for real-world events, as a unique area of tokenized assets. a16z believes these markets will cover more and more events, from elections to complex geopolitical outcomes. But there are still few technical solutions here; the fund's analysts believe that decentralized solutions based on AI agents will be needed, which will be able to trade on these markets by analyzing global signals.
Privacy and Media
Continuing the development of stablecoins and tokenization, a16z noted the importance of creating privacy and security infrastructure. The fund points to the prospects of developing new principles for handling data and information, where full user control over data becomes the foundation for the future of communications.
a16z experts suggested that in 2026, what the authors call "Secrets-as-a-service" will develop, where data protection becomes a product. That is, services providing encryption for sensitive confidential information that meets all regulatory requirements. For example, where AI is used to verify and constantly check financial transactions, automatically blocking anomalous operations without disclosing personal data to others.
Having paid special attention to the vulnerabilities of centralized traditional media models, a16z raised questions of censorship and perceived objectivity in the process of creating and sharing information.
"What's new here is not the growth of social networks, but the emergence of cryptographic tools that allow people to publicly verify their statements," wrote Robert Hackett from the a16z crypto editorial team, noting the importance for the entire media sphere, where trust is already being eroded by low-quality AI-generated content.
Hypercompetition and Regulation
The crypto industry itself is experiencing a turning point of immense competition, where many projects, striving for quick monetization, are restructuring products into trading instruments, leading to a loss of long-term value. a16z recommended that developers focus on creating products, not on immediate financial flows.
As a key factor for the sustainable development of crypto projects, primarily in the US, experts highlighted regulation, as the adoption of clear laws on market structure could put an end to legal uncertainty.
The lack of clear regulation, in the view of a16z's chief legal counsel, Miles Jennings, has led to a rather strange situation: "Developers avoided transparency, and project governance turned into theater. Token economics were designed to have no value and lacked business models. Worse, crypto projects that circumvented legal rules often outpaced conscientious developers."
Jennings believes that in 2026 this situation may finally change for the better, after which blockchains will be able to function as networks — open, autonomous, composable, trustworthy, neutral, and decentralized.
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