What's Next for DeFi in 2026?
We reveal the trends to focus on next year.
Last year, DL News attempted to predict the top three DeFi trends for 2025.
We forecasted that traditional finance would enter DeFi at an unprecedented rate, more protocols would launch their own blockchains, and fintech companies would integrate DeFi into their products on a large scale.
It turns out we were quite accurate.
In 2025, we saw banks issuing stablecoins, asset management companies allocating billions of dollars to DeFi lending protocols, and Wall Street firms flocking to the tokenized asset space.
In January, Coinbase kicked off fintech integration with its Bitcoin loans based on Morpho. In June, trading giant Robinhood began using Arbitrum to offer European users tokenized stock trading services.
Just two weeks ago, neobank Revolut, with $75 billion in assets, integrated the largest decentralized exchange Uniswap for fiat on-ramps, swaps, and cryptocurrency purchases.
As for custom blockchains, it's no longer just DeFi protocols launching them. Fintech companies have joined the competition, with the most notable example being Stripe's upcoming Tempo blockchain.
These trends are likely far from over and will only grow further in the coming year.
But as 2025 draws to a close, we will attempt to predict another three major trends that will shake up DeFi in 2026.
Unified Stablecoin Layer
If there is one trend that defined DeFi in 2025, it was stablecoins.
The circulation of dollar-pegged tokens soared to over $3 trillion, with everyone from family office managers to U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent making grand predictions about their exponential growth.
However, despite their tremendous success, stablecoins still face a major obstacle to sustained adoption: fragmented liquidity.
The largest stablecoins are scattered across numerous different trading venues, blockchains, and exchanges. This fragmentation makes it harder for traders to efficiently execute large orders, leading to higher transaction costs, greater price volatility, and lower market efficiency.
We predict that in 2026, stablecoin issuers will make significant progress in building and promoting the adoption of a unified liquidity layer to address this issue.
Many stablecoin issuers have already begun to act.
Circle launched its Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol, which allows developers to transfer USDC across different blockchains through a native burn-and-mint mechanism.
Similarly, the largest stablecoin issuer, Tether, launched USDT0, an omnichain stablecoin that operates as a single asset across multiple blockchains.
If these companies succeed, Jascha Samadi, co-founder of crypto venture capital firm Greenfield Capital, told DL News: "The transfer and conversion of stablecoins will become more capital efficient, cheaper, and more predictable."
DEXs Compete Head-to-Head with CEXs
Using decentralized exchanges has long involved a trade-off. Although permissionless, DEXs have sacrificed liquidity and price competitiveness compared to centralized exchanges.
In 2025, that changed. Improved user experience, intent-based trading, and the dark pool AMM model on Solana have made some DEXs as competitive as, or even superior to, centralized exchanges.
At the same time, traders are growing increasingly weary of failures at centralized exchanges.
In May, Coinbase disclosed that cybercriminals had bribed and recruited a group of rogue overseas customer service agents to steal customer data for social engineering attacks.
Then in October, Binance apologized after its system unfairly liquidated user trades during periods of high volatility and refunded users $283 million.
There have also been more general complaints about technical glitches at centralized exchanges, account restrictions without prior notice, and difficulties in obtaining customer support.
Over the past year, the share of crypto trading conducted through DEXs has grown rapidly. According to an analysis by CoinGecko using DefiLlama data, as of November, DEXs accounted for over 21% of all crypto trading volume, hitting a record high.
We predict this trend will continue. It may still be too early for DEXs to surpass centralized exchanges in absolute trading volume next year, but by the end of 2026, they could account for 50% of all crypto trading.
Privacy Drives Adoption
This year, privacy quickly became one of the most important topics in DeFi.
The privacy-focused blockchain Zcash far outperformed the rest of the market with a staggering 860% surge in the final three months of the year, with its ZEC token hitting $711 in November, its highest price since 2016, before pulling back to $395.
Elsewhere, the Ethereum Foundation announced it would expand efforts to embed privacy into the $2.84 trillion blockchain.
Advocates argue that crypto privacy is essential for the physical safety of the technology's users. Just as people don't want their traditional bank statements made public, users generally don't want their entire financial lives exposed on the blockchain.
For institutions tentatively entering DeFi, the lack of built-in privacy presents a dilemma. According to those involved with the Canton Network, a blockchain designed for institutional finance, they must either use the blockchain while risking exposure of pricing, strategies, or sensitive investment positions, or continue using slower, less efficient traditional systems.
Canton isn't the only one making this point.
Alan Scott, co-founder and contributor to the Railgun privacy protocol, previously told DL News in an interview that privacy-compliant security features, such as private multi-signature wallets, are a necessary prerequisite for many institutions looking to go on-chain.
Our final prediction is that in 2026, adoption of privacy-oriented protocols and blockchains will continue to grow, more blockchains—such as Ethereum—will launch their own privacy infrastructure, and these developments will drive a new wave of institutional adoption.
