Gate Ventures' latest release for the 2026 outlook indicates that five emerging frontier areas are rapidly reshaping the industry landscape, leading the next phase of Web3 development. First, the on-chain market 'real-time information aggregation layer' is quickly rising, becoming the core intelligence infrastructure for integrating fragmented data and liquidity. Second, decentralized payment and foreign exchange settlement networks are replacing traditional neobanks, enabling cross-border, real-time, and borderless value settlement. Third, as autonomous robots accelerate in popularity, a 'machine-native' financial system is beginning to take shape, allowing robots to collaborate and transact on-chain. Fourth, institutional-grade DeFi is moving towards a 'meta-yield' integrated platform, constructing a unified yield and risk engine by consolidating diverse on-chain yield sources. Fifth, cryptocurrency mining is transforming into a distributed computing power and energy infrastructure provider in the AI era, becoming an important component of high-performance computing and energy networks. Gate Ventures states that these trends together signify a structural transformation in the global flow of value, computing power scheduling, and collaborative methods of intelligent systems, while also showing that an increasing number of crypto and ecosystem companies are accelerating their move towards public capital markets to expand Pre-IPO investment channels.
The crypto industry will reach a significant turning point in 2026: after more than a decade of infrastructure building, Web3 is deeply intersecting with the fastest-growing sectors of the global economy. The coming year will be driven by entirely new demand rather than minor improvements: on-chain real-time information aggregators will become the intelligent foundation of the crypto market; borderless payments and FX networks will replace outdated fintech infrastructure; autonomous robots will collaborate and trade on-chain through machine-native financial systems; institutional-grade DeFi will integrate into a unified risk and yield engine; miners will evolve into global distributed AI computing and energy providers.
For projects deeply engaged in the aforementioned fields, Gate Ventures looks forward to connecting with more outstanding teams.
Relevant teams can contact Gate Ventures through the X platform @gate_ventures or send project proposals to ventures@gate.com
1. On-chain market real-time information aggregation layer
A new category of on-chain 'information aggregators' is becoming one of the most critical foundational layers of Web3. With the surge of on-chain activities, prediction markets, governance data, social dynamics, transaction flows, and AI signals are continuously generated across platforms like Polymarket, Hyperliquid, Kalshi, Hedgehog, and multiple chains. The question is no longer whether data exists, but how to understand the data. Each platform generates its own set of probabilities, incentives, and narratives, but this information is not aligned with each other and cannot form a unified view. The key breakthrough for the next phase will come from infrastructure capable of integrating these signals and transforming them into a clear and consistent panoramic view.
The capabilities of these aggregators extend far beyond presenting charts. They can ingest decentralized event data, standardize probabilities and sentiments from different sources, merge on-chain telemetry data with social contexts, and transform disparate activities into clear insights usable directly by traders, institutions, DAOs, enterprises, and automated systems. This transformation is akin to what Bloomberg is to traditional markets, organizing chaotic information into truly actionable intelligence.
With the rise of AI Agents, this becomes increasingly important. Agents need clean, structured, real-time data to manage risk, allocate liquidity, respond to events, and execute strategies without human supervision. As autonomous systems begin to participate in the market, the demand for an 'integrated intelligent information flow'—a capability that simplifies the entire information landscape—will become inevitable. By 2026, the most competitive platforms in this field will be those that can massively integrate decentralized information and provide fast, explainable intelligence infrastructure. In an age drowned in noise, the ability to unify and interpret various signals will become the core advantage and one of the most underestimated opportunities in the Web3 space.
2. Neobanks, borderless payment infrastructure, and on-chain forex settlement
While fintech neobanks have improved user experience, they are still constrained by traditional financial infrastructure such as ACH, SWIFT, card organization networks, correspondent banking systems, and custodial payment service providers (PSPs) — these systems are essentially designed for human users and office hours, rather than for machines, global commerce, or real-time settlement. In contrast, blockchain networks can now achieve borderless, 24/7 value transfer on a global scale. Stablecoins are becoming global settlement assets, while decentralized liquidity layers and smart contract routers provide continuously programmable forex conversions between currencies such as USDC, EURC, and JPY-denominated stablecoins.
This opens the door to a whole new financial architecture where payments and foreign exchange can flow as freely as data. Enterprises can automate cross-border payroll, invoicing, treasury scheduling, and hedging operations; merchants can price in one currency but settle instantly in another; machines can complete transactions autonomously without bank accounts. As an open, permissionless system, such networks are becoming a universal settlement layer connecting real-world commerce and the on-chain economy, not a replication of neobanks, but a payment and forex infrastructure that traditional fintech can never provide.
3. Robotic infrastructure and machine-native financial networks
AI and robotics technology from the Web2 phase is rapidly evolving, with companies like 1X, Figure, Skild, and Unitree making significant progress, while investment in the Physical AI field continues to grow. As robots transition from scripted machines to embodied autonomous agents, a critical gap is emerging: different manufacturers and models cannot communicate or collaborate through a unified, neutral layer. This has led to a demand for an open, cross-device operating layer, which is precisely the capability that Web3 can provide. On-chain identity (DID) enables robots to self-identify without relying on manufacturers; smart contract registries allow them to publish their own functions, states, and telemetry data; immutable logs provide verifiable accountability for robot behavior. Smart contracts can also coordinate tasks and workflows among multi-manufacturer robot clusters, providing the interoperability foundation that current traditional robot software stacks lack.
Autonomous robots also require a machine-native financial system to pay for electricity, data, computing power, and service fees, but the traditional financial system is completely ineffective for them: robots cannot open accounts, cannot pass KYC, and cannot use human-centered payment networks. Web3 empowers robots with direct economic behavior capabilities, enabling autonomous settlement without intermediaries through wallets, signatures, and global micro-payments. Blockchain provides instantaneous, low-cost settlement capabilities, while standards like x402 allow agents to automatically pay for access or service fees. Smart contracts further offer custody, conditional payments, insurance, and reputation systems, constructing a programmable, borderless financial layer designed for inter-machine transactions. In this system, cryptocurrency is no longer an add-on but the only viable settlement infrastructure supporting the autonomous robot ecosystem.
4. The rise of institutional-grade DeFi and meta-yield platforms
The next generation of platforms will integrate perpetual contracts with lending markets and strategy vaults, allowing collateral to continuously generate yields while supporting leveraged positions; and a shared margin system spanning spot, perpetual, and options will gradually evolve these platforms functionally into 24/7 multi-asset prime brokers.
However, in the underlying structure, on-chain yields are still dispersed across various sources, including: staking and restaking rewards, perpetual contract funding fees and basis, MEV and order flow profits, market-making fees and impermanent loss, stablecoins and forex basis, RWA and off-chain asset net value differences, as well as liquidity premiums in prediction markets and InfoFi markets. The key opportunity in 2026 lies in viewing these yield sources as combinable 'yield atoms' and packaging them into meta-yield products. Aggregation strategies can integrate market structure yields (funding fees, basis, MEV, FX spreads), layering hedging and arbitrage on top of the base yields, and use prediction markets and AI Agents as dynamic configuration signals, ultimately transforming fragmented yields into structured, transparent on-chain fixed income products, upgrading CeDeFi platforms from single trading venues to complete yield and risk engines.
5. Crypto miners as distributed AI computing and energy providers
As AI evolves rapidly, its energy demands are rising sharply, while the existing electricity supply capabilities struggle to keep pace. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), global data centers are projected to double their electricity consumption from 415 TWh in 2024 to 945 TWh by 2030, accounting for 2.5%–3% of the world's total electricity consumption. However, new power supply often faces limitations from complex grid connection procedures, strict site selection requirements, and lengthy construction and approval cycles. The imbalance between energy supply and computing power demand has become a new pain point in the AI era. In this context, crypto mining companies with rich energy reserves and efficient electricity cost models accumulated over the past decade are becoming increasingly attractive. These miners typically hold ready-to-use electricity supply licenses, have signed long-term low-cost electricity contracts, and possess mature infrastructure including substations, cooling systems, and emergency mechanisms. At the same time, switching equipment from cryptocurrency mining to handling AI computational loads is technically relatively straightforward.
As a result, in 2025, several major mining companies such as IREN Limited, Core Scientific, and Hut 8 reached new stock price highs after strategically expanding into high-performance computing (HPC) and AI cloud services. Notably, most of these mining operations are located in North America. Meanwhile, mining companies in the Asia-Pacific, Central Asia, Middle East, and other regions still have considerable growth potential and valuation upside when undergoing similar transformations.
These five cutting-edge themes—the real-time information aggregators driving on-chain markets, borderless payment and forex infrastructure, machine-native networks for robots, institutional-grade meta-yield systems, and crypto miners transforming into AI computing suppliers—together outline the path for Web3 to evolve into a 'universal coordination and computing layer' in the AI-driven economy. Meanwhile, an increasing number of ecological enterprises are entering substantial revenue scales and maturing in regulatory compliance, giving them the opportunity to access public capital markets through IPOs, De-SPACs, and mergers and acquisitions.
As the industry moves towards 2026, the true frontrunners will be the teams building products at critical intersections, where blockchain exhibits structural advantages in liquidity, computing power, collaboration, and settlement. As these forces converge, Gate Ventures believes that the coming year could become the most transformative year in the history of the crypto industry, releasing a new generation of investable opportunities for global entrepreneurs, institutions, and users.
About Gate Ventures
Gate Ventures is the venture capital arm of Gate.com, focusing on decentralized infrastructure, middleware, and applications, aiming to drive global innovation and transformation in the Web 3.0 era. Gate Ventures collaborates closely with global industry leaders to support teams and startups with innovative visions and technical strengths, helping them reshape the future of social and financial interactions.
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