Fred Wilson says crypto’s next big moment won’t be a new chain — it will be invisible blockchains Veteran VC Fred Wilson predicts that 2026 won’t be marked by a shiny new blockchain protocol, but by a user-experience shift that hides chains from everyday users. In a blog post published last week outlining his tech forecasts for 2026, Wilson argued the breakthrough will come when “blockchains disappear behind better consumer interfaces that allow users to use, spend, trade, and send tokens without concerning themselves with which blockchain they are on.” A founding partner of Union Square Ventures, Wilson helped seed some of the internet’s biggest early winners — Twitter, Etsy and Tumblr — and was an early backer of crypto names including Coinbase, Ethereum and Filecoin. He has tracked and backed the space for years, famously calling bitcoin “an interesting investment opportunity” as early as 2011. Wilson’s prediction reflects a long-standing thesis: blockchain’s promise depends less on raw technical specs and more on making the technology effortless to use. For him, the hard, practical work needed to drive mainstream adoption includes decentralized identity, peer-to-peer finance, and open protocols developers can build on. He’s also been a frequent critic of the industry’s worst impulses. Wilson warns that hype and speculative token mania risk undermining crypto’s credibility, and that focusing on short-term gains detracts from building real infrastructure. He likens today’s crypto to the early internet — a period when everyday actions like sending an email required technical know-how — and says the remedy is better design. In Wilson’s view, apps should absorb the underlying complexity — managing which chain a transaction lives on, for example — so users can focus on outcomes, not mechanics. That user-first approach, he argues, is the difference between crypto remaining a niche technology and achieving broad mainstream adoption. Read more AI-generated news on: undefined/news

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