Coinbase Ventures, the venture capital arm of America's largest cryptocurrency exchange, has announced its strategic investment focus for the upcoming year. The firm is prioritizing funds toward real-world asset (RWA) trading, decentralized finance (DeFi), and artificial intelligence (AI) initiatives.
In a recent blog post, Coinbase Ventures articulated its active search for teams engaged in asset tokenization, specialized exchanges and trading terminals, next-generation DeFi protocols, and advancements in agentic AI. The firm stated, "These are the categories where we believe the next big breakout companies and protocols will emerge, and where we’re looking to actively invest."
Since its inception in 2018, Coinbase Ventures has amassed a significant track record, with 618 investments and a current portfolio of 422 startups, according to PitchBook data. Recent investments include the DeFi compliance platform 0xbow on November 18, and in October, investments were made in payment infrastructure firms Zynk and ZAR, as well as the prediction markets platform Kalshi.
Kinji Steimetz, an investor at Coinbase Ventures, expressed expectations for new forms of exposure to real-world assets, particularly through perpetual futures contracts that offer "synthetic exposure to offchain assets."
Steimetz also highlighted the emergence of "prop-AMMs" – proprietary automated market makers. This new exchange design aims to shield liquidity providers from exploitation by sophisticated traders and bots.
Jonathan King, another investor at Coinbase Ventures, predicted the rise of prediction market aggregators. He anticipates these platforms will become the dominant interface layer, consolidating approximately $600 million in fragmented liquidity and providing a unified view of real-time event odds across various venues.
Next-Generation DeFi Poised for Emergence in 2026
Ethan Oak, an investor at Coinbase Ventures, suggested that integrating perpetual futures exchanges with other DeFi protocols, such as lending services, could unlock new levels of capital efficiency. This integration would allow traders to earn yields on their collateral while maintaining leveraged positions.
Oak also foresees growth in onchain privacy-preserving tools, noting a significant increase in developer activity focused on privacy-centric assets like Zcash (ZEC).
Meanwhile, King anticipates the development of DeFi protocols that combine onchain reputation with offchain data. This innovation is expected to enable unsecured borrowing at scale. "The market opportunity is massive," he stated.
"The US alone has $1.3 trillion in revolving, unsecured credit lines that crypto can capture through superior capital efficiency and global accessibility."
Growth Predicted for Agentic AI, DePIN, and Proof of Humanity
The final three areas of innovation identified by Coinbase Ventures are within the AI sector. Steimetz pointed out a gap in the training data available for robotic and embodied AI systems, noting that "available data sets are still limited and fragmented."
Decentralized physical infrastructure networks (DePIN) are seen as a potential framework for scaling the collection of high-quality physical interaction data crucial for robotics.
Hoolie Tejwani, head of Coinbase Ventures, identified Proof of Humanity solutions as a significant growth area for 2026. These solutions leverage biometrics, cryptographic signing, and open standards to distinguish between human-generated and AI-generated content.
Furthermore, the emergence of AI agent tooling is expected to empower non-technical founders to quickly launch onchain businesses. King suggested that in 2026, AI agents could further democratize onchain building by handling tasks such as smart contract code generation, security audits, and continuous monitoring.