Subscribe

2025 was a reality check for consumer crypto.

After reviewing 400+ early-stage companies and backing a subset of them, one lesson stood out clearly: consumer crypto doesn’t win by being more decentralized. It wins when it’s simpler, distribution-first, and native to how people already behave.

We saw what worked, what failed, and where teams got stuck. From over-indexing on ecosystems, to chasing the “current thing,” to building products that felt crypto-native but not consumer-native. The strongest companies weren’t the loudest or most ideologically pure; they were the ones quietly shipping, iterating, and finding real users.

Those learnings shape how we’re thinking about the next cycle.

Here’s what the SGV team is leaning into for 2026, and what we think the next version of the internet starts to feel like.

Prediction Market Ecosystems: From Hype to Efficient Infrastructure

Prediction markets solidified themselves as a core consumer crypto category in 2025, with massive volumes on platforms like Polymarket and Kalshi. However, inefficiencies (fragmentation, liquidity silos, and limited capital efficiency for long-term positions) persist. In 2026, we’ll witness a maturation phase: specialized teams building aggregators for cross-platform liquidity, DeFi integrations for lending against positions, and perpetual-like instruments for holding bets without expiry risks. These layers will unlock greater capital efficiency, attracting sophisticated retail users and bridging prediction markets into everyday tools for hedging real-world events (elections, sports, culture). The result? Broader consumer participation, with prediction markets becoming a go-to interface for “info finance” and collective intelligence.

~Jakub (@jakub_rusiecki), SGV Co-founder

Stablecoins enable emerging markets to skip “Western fintech,” again

Stablecoins will enable emerging markets to leapfrog Western fintech the same way they skipped broadband for fiber and satellite internet. Where US fintech started with P2P payments like Venmo, most emerging markets already have fast mobile payments, but lack trustworthy savings infrastructure. Stablecoins initially filled that gap through remittances, then banking apps with yield. That’s consensus. The edge is mass automation enabled by stablecoin rails: vaults, tokenized stock portfolios, automated accounting operations, and smart contract escrow that replace lawyers, accountants, and other middleme

n. It’s not just about how you earn money anymore, it’s about how you automatically invest it, save it, split it, and spend it without touching a bank.

~Lawson (@lwsnbaker), SGV Member, M&A Growth at @Relayzero

Yield everywhere all at once

I expect every single penny I hold to earn auto-yield at the risk free rate, or higher - without having to authorize, KYC, or anything. We’re entering the max capital efficiency era. All digital products who hold user balances will need to offer this as table stakes, and there will be opportunities for orchestrators to win this market.

~Morning Mist (@0x_Mist), SGV Co-founder

Social shopping grows on crypto rails

Social shopping already happens through creators, group chats, TikTok comments, Discords, and private communities, but value capture is broken. Creators don’t own their storefronts, communities don’t share in upside, and users have no reason to coordinate purchases beyond vibes. Crypto changes this by making purchases programmable. Groups can pool demand, creators can earn automatically on downstream purchases, and users can get rewarded for signaling taste early or influencing what sells. Social shopping won’t replace Amazon or Shopify. It will live on top of existing platforms, embedded wherever attention already is.

~Brock (@brockchainn), SGV Analyst

The Real Bottleneck in the Neobank Boom

As 2025 went by, more and more crypto neobanks kept popping up. It reached a point where every new announcement made me think: there’s no way this is sustainable. How do hundreds of neobanks all coexist? This is chaos.

But even if most of the ones launching today don’t get enough traction to survive long term, the reality is that dozens, if not hundreds, will stick around. I eventually came around to the idea that this outcome is inevitable. Each neobank will have a distinct focus on a specific group of consumers, whether by region or by behavior. or something else. That’s because the high startup costs that once constrained fintech are gone, and the economics of running a neobank that settles and operates onchain make sense even at a more moderate scale.

The real bottleneck will be distribution, not tech. What needs to be built next are the systems that make a world with hundreds of coexisting neobanks actually work.

~Jacob (@jjjjacobx), SGV Member, BizOps at @LayerZero_Labs

24/7 mainstream payment channels

More than 50% of mainstream payment channels and solution companies in the market for consumer will allow 24x7 crypto transfer and funding services.

~Blake Gao (@BlakeGao), SGV Member

Local currency stablecoins and “benefits without the dollar”

Dollar stablecoins proved the model. But the next wave is local currency stablecoins and products that let people get the benefits of crypto without defaulting to the dollar. We’re already seeing momentum: EURC, QCAD, IDRX, and 20+ other local currency stablecoins have launched on Base independently. Together, stablecoins on Base account for more than $6B in value. That demand is just the beginning. In 2026, founders will build across the entire stack. Better on / off ramps like Onboard, products for emerging markets like Berry, or tools that help traditional businesses accept stablecoin payments like Hurupay. The prize is huge: Bringing global financial stability to billions.

~David Tso (@davidtsocy), SGV Member, Ecosystem at @Base

Social wallets become the distribution choke point

In 2026, chains will stop thinking of “users” as a direct GTM channel. Wallets become a real distribution choke point. You can already see the shift starting: Farcaster focusing on their wallet, Base and Zapper leaning into being social wallet clients, and wallets like Phantom, MetaMask, and Trust Wallet onboarding whole new chain ecosystems. The wallets that can route liquidity, surface apps, own discovery, and keep data in house will have outsized leverage. That also means M&A heats up as wallets verticalize the stack. Wallets are becoming onchain app stores in a way.

~Abi D. (@abishek), SGV Member, Technical Product Lead at Zerion

Mobile-first focus

More people will start focusing on mobile-first experiences. We’ll see a flood of apps and mini-apps entering the consumer crypto space. Apple will definitely try to capture part of this market, and major players like Coinbase will likely step in to negotiate on behalf of crypto developers.

~KC (@vtes369), SGV Member, Hooga Founder

Consumer apps stop feeling like crypto

Crypto fades into infrastructure, not identity. Winning products lead with a clear selling point: getting paid faster, playing with friends, following creators, accessing status, and only use crypto where it materially improves the experience. Onboarding feels like a normal app signup, wallets are embedded or abstracted, and fees are invisible. Stablecoins settle value globally, wallets power identity and distribution, and onchain rails handle payments, but none of it is front-and-center.

~Brock (@brockchainn), SGV Analyst

AI × Consumer Crypto: Collapsing Barriers to Creation and Ownership

In 2026, AI will dramatically lower the friction for content creation in consumer crypto, turning everyday users into prolific creators. This remains a wide-open design space, with explosive experimentation around blockchain as a native layer for IP attribution, provenance, and incentive alignment. Tools powered by AI will enable anyone to generate high-quality media (art, music, videos, memes, or personalized experiences) with seamless on-chain minting and monetization. Blockchains will act as the backbone for verifiable ownership and automated royalties, fostering a surge in net-new consumer-generated content. We’ll see millions of non-technical users participating, shifting crypto from speculation to everyday creative expression, much like how social platforms democratized posting in the 2010s.

~Jakub (@jakub_rusiecki), SGV Co-founder

From products to platforms: users and creators keep more of the upside

In consumer crypto, we’ll see a shift from products to true platforms where users and creators collectively generate and retain more economic value than the platform itself.

~Sid (@sidkal), SGV Member, Roll Founder

Attention won’t just be fought over, it’ll be priced

In 2026, consumer crypto still won’t be mainstream, but attention will start to have a visible price in specific contexts. Instead of likes or reach, some communities will use money to decide what deserves attention. This will show up clearly around streamers and live social interactions: paying to surface messages, to influence what gets discussed next, or to bet on moments that will happen during a stream. In parallel, small, niche groups: trading chats, private communities, forums, will experiment with similar ideas, where paying or speculating is a cleaner way to allocate attention than spam or algorithms. This won’t replace Web2 platforms, but it will quietly sit on top of them where attention is scarce and valuable.

~Nemo (@ncerovac), SGV Member, Daedalus Angels

Super ad targeting enabled by crypto and ZK-TLS

The adage that “half of venture dollars raised is spent in Google and Meta Ads” is still true, CAC for consumer companies is at ATHs, and Ad platforms are as saturated as ever. But, ZK-TLS changes the game, and a new era of acquisition will emerge. The first touch/last touch/multitouch attribution model will evolve. Brands will more easily than ever target users who have verified information, and for the first time, brands will be able to do “super targeting” for specific subset of users, i.e.: users who have “$X spent in groceries in Y store in the last 30 days + watched more than X minutes of content from A, B or C influencers.” Combining different data points from the online/onchain lives of users, all verified, and monetized via ZK data protocols onchain. We’ve made 2 investments in this wave, and plan to do more.

~Morning Mist (@0x_Mist), SGV Co-founder

SocialFi stays bullish (but looks different)

SocialFi is still a bullish direction for token-driven social orchestration platform even though many of them change the solution after years’ exploration.

~Blake Gao (@BlakeGao), SGV Member

Humans become paid infrastructure for AI agents

The 2026 shift is humans working for AI agents, not as employees, but as paid infrastructure. Scouts surface deals for AI venture funds like ADIN and earn carry. Users turn on location services to improve hyperlocal algorithms and get paid per data point. Curators flag emerging trends AI can’t detect and collect bounties when their taste performs. The inversion is complete: where we built AI to assist human workflows, we’re now building micro-labor markets where humans handle the last-mile tasks, edge cases, and context that agents can’t, and get compensated directly from agent-owned wallets in real time. Call it human-powered AI infrastructure, and it’s paid and verified onchain.

~Lawson (@lwsnbaker), SGV Member, M&A Growth at @Relayzero

We over-indexed on revenue - 2026 corrects it

We’ve over indexed on revenue as an industry and that will become realized in 2026, small products/teams shouldn’t be laser focused on revenue and certainly shouldn’t be burning revenue to burn tokens.

~FireEyes 🔥_🔥 (@fireeyesgov)

The Rise of Gen Z and Gen Alpha Founders

Building on the 2025 emergence of young, internet-native founders, 2026 will mark the year this cohort truly cracks the code on sustainable growth. Gen Z and early Gen Alpha entrants deeply understand virality, attention economics, and meme-driven distribution, but many 2025 launches relied heavily on hype. In 2026, we’ll see breakout successes where these founders convert viral moments into sticky user retention and real product-market fit. Expect a wave of consumer apps (social tokens, AI-powered games, or onchain communities) that feel intuitively built for mobile-first, short-attention-span audiences. This generation’s edge in cultural fluency will drive mainstream adoption, proving that virality can evolve into lasting ecosystems rather than fleeting pumps.

~Jakub (@jakub_rusiecki), SGV Co-founder

Web3-native consumer brands break out

Some native Web3 companies will come to be the leading one in the top list of consumer brands like Pudgy Penguins and more.

~Blake Gao (@BlakeGao), SGV Member

“Allocation airdrops” become real: access replaces freebies

2026 is the year that ‘allocation aidrops’ become a real thing, where based on usage of an app or onchain history, etc. Users will get allocation to buy into an ICO (basically the ability to purchase tokens replaces airdrops).

~FireEyes 🔥_🔥 (@fireeyesgov)

Subscribe

The foregoing material is provided to professionals of Social Graph Ventures LLC and solely for the purpose of such individuals’ evaluation of the investment opportunity described herein. This material is not intended to provide any person with investment advice or any recommendation regarding the appropriateness or merit of any investment for such person on an individual basis. These materials are not intended to create any investment advisory relationship.

Subscribe

2025 was a reality check for consumer crypto.

After reviewing 400+ early-stage companies and backing a subset of them, one lesson stood out clearly: consumer crypto doesn’t win by being more decentralized. It wins when it’s simpler, distribution-first, and native to how people already behave.

We saw what worked, what failed, and where teams got stuck. From over-indexing on ecosystems, to chasing the “current thing,” to building products that felt crypto-native but not consumer-native. The strongest companies weren’t the loudest or most ideologically pure; they were the ones quietly shipping, iterating, and finding real users.

Those learnings shape how we’re thinking about the next cycle.

Here’s what the SGV team is leaning into for 2026, and what we think the next version of the internet starts to feel like.

Prediction Market Ecosystems: From Hype to Efficient Infrastructure

Prediction markets solidified themselves as a core consumer crypto category in 2025, with massive volumes on platforms like Polymarket and Kalshi. However, inefficiencies (fragmentation, liquidity silos, and limited capital efficiency for long-term positions) persist. In 2026, we’ll witness a maturation phase: specialized teams building aggregators for cross-platform liquidity, DeFi integrations for lending against positions, and perpetual-like instruments for holding bets without expiry risks. These layers will unlock greater capital efficiency, attracting sophisticated retail users and bridging prediction markets into everyday tools for hedging real-world events (elections, sports, culture). The result? Broader consumer participation, with prediction markets becoming a go-to interface for “info finance” and collective intelligence.

~Jakub (@jakub_rusiecki), SGV Co-founder

Stablecoins enable emerging markets to skip “Western fintech,” again

Stablecoins will enable emerging markets to leapfrog Western fintech the same way they skipped broadband for fiber and satellite internet. Where US fintech started with P2P payments like Venmo, most emerging markets already have fast mobile payments, but lack trustworthy savings infrastructure. Stablecoins initially filled that gap through remittances, then banking apps with yield. That’s consensus. The edge is mass automation enabled by stablecoin rails: vaults, tokenized stock portfolios, automated accounting operations, and smart contract escrow that replace lawyers, accountants, and other middleme

n. It’s not just about how you earn money anymore, it’s about how you automatically invest it, save it, split it, and spend it without touching a bank.

~Lawson (@lwsnbaker), SGV Member, M&A Growth at @Relayzero

Yield everywhere all at once

I expect every single penny I hold to earn auto-yield at the risk free rate, or higher - without having to authorize, KYC, or anything. We’re entering the max capital efficiency era. All digital products who hold user balances will need to offer this as table stakes, and there will be opportunities for orchestrators to win this market.

~Morning Mist (@0x_Mist), SGV Co-founder

Social shopping grows on crypto rails

Social shopping already happens through creators, group chats, TikTok comments, Discords, and private communities, but value capture is broken. Creators don’t own their storefronts, communities don’t share in upside, and users have no reason to coordinate purchases beyond vibes. Crypto changes this by making purchases programmable. Groups can pool demand, creators can earn automatically on downstream purchases, and users can get rewarded for signaling taste early or influencing what sells. Social shopping won’t replace Amazon or Shopify. It will live on top of existing platforms, embedded wherever attention already is.

~Brock (@brockchainn), SGV Analyst

The Real Bottleneck in the Neobank Boom

As 2025 went by, more and more crypto neobanks kept popping up. It reached a point where every new announcement made me think: there’s no way this is sustainable. How do hundreds of neobanks all coexist? This is chaos.

But even if most of the ones launching today don’t get enough traction to survive long term, the reality is that dozens, if not hundreds, will stick around. I eventually came around to the idea that this outcome is inevitable. Each neobank will have a distinct focus on a specific group of consumers, whether by region or by behavior. or something else. That’s because the high startup costs that once constrained fintech are gone, and the economics of running a neobank that settles and operates onchain make sense even at a more moderate scale.

The real bottleneck will be distribution, not tech. What needs to be built next are the systems that make a world with hundreds of coexisting neobanks actually work.

~Jacob (@jjjjacobx), SGV Member, BizOps at @LayerZero_Labs

24/7 mainstream payment channels

More than 50% of mainstream payment channels and solution companies in the market for consumer will allow 24x7 crypto transfer and funding services.

~Blake Gao (@BlakeGao), SGV Member

Local currency stablecoins and “benefits without the dollar”

Dollar stablecoins proved the model. But the next wave is local currency stablecoins and products that let people get the benefits of crypto without defaulting to the dollar. We’re already seeing momentum: EURC, QCAD, IDRX, and 20+ other local currency stablecoins have launched on Base independently. Together, stablecoins on Base account for more than $6B in value. That demand is just the beginning. In 2026, founders will build across the entire stack. Better on / off ramps like Onboard, products for emerging markets like Berry, or tools that help traditional businesses accept stablecoin payments like Hurupay. The prize is huge: Bringing global financial stability to billions.

~David Tso (@davidtsocy), SGV Member, Ecosystem at @Base

Social wallets become the distribution choke point

In 2026, chains will stop thinking of “users” as a direct GTM channel. Wallets become a real distribution choke point. You can already see the shift starting: Farcaster focusing on their wallet, Base and Zapper leaning into being social wallet clients, and wallets like Phantom, MetaMask, and Trust Wallet onboarding whole new chain ecosystems. The wallets that can route liquidity, surface apps, own discovery, and keep data in house will have outsized leverage. That also means M&A heats up as wallets verticalize the stack. Wallets are becoming onchain app stores in a way.

~Abi D. (@abishek), SGV Member, Technical Product Lead at Zerion

Mobile-first focus

More people will start focusing on mobile-first experiences. We’ll see a flood of apps and mini-apps entering the consumer crypto space. Apple will definitely try to capture part of this market, and major players like Coinbase will likely step in to negotiate on behalf of crypto developers.

~KC (@vtes369), SGV Member, Hooga Founder

Consumer apps stop feeling like crypto

Crypto fades into infrastructure, not identity. Winning products lead with a clear selling point: getting paid faster, playing with friends, following creators, accessing status, and only use crypto where it materially improves the experience. Onboarding feels like a normal app signup, wallets are embedded or abstracted, and fees are invisible. Stablecoins settle value globally, wallets power identity and distribution, and onchain rails handle payments, but none of it is front-and-center.

~Brock (@brockchainn), SGV Analyst

AI × Consumer Crypto: Collapsing Barriers to Creation and Ownership

In 2026, AI will dramatically lower the friction for content creation in consumer crypto, turning everyday users into prolific creators. This remains a wide-open design space, with explosive experimentation around blockchain as a native layer for IP attribution, provenance, and incentive alignment. Tools powered by AI will enable anyone to generate high-quality media (art, music, videos, memes, or personalized experiences) with seamless on-chain minting and monetization. Blockchains will act as the backbone for verifiable ownership and automated royalties, fostering a surge in net-new consumer-generated content. We’ll see millions of non-technical users participating, shifting crypto from speculation to everyday creative expression, much like how social platforms democratized posting in the 2010s.

~Jakub (@jakub_rusiecki), SGV Co-founder

From products to platforms: users and creators keep more of the upside

In consumer crypto, we’ll see a shift from products to true platforms where users and creators collectively generate and retain more economic value than the platform itself.

~Sid (@sidkal), SGV Member, Roll Founder

Attention won’t just be fought over, it’ll be priced

In 2026, consumer crypto still won’t be mainstream, but attention will start to have a visible price in specific contexts. Instead of likes or reach, some communities will use money to decide what deserves attention. This will show up clearly around streamers and live social interactions: paying to surface messages, to influence what gets discussed next, or to bet on moments that will happen during a stream. In parallel, small, niche groups: trading chats, private communities, forums, will experiment with similar ideas, where paying or speculating is a cleaner way to allocate attention than spam or algorithms. This won’t replace Web2 platforms, but it will quietly sit on top of them where attention is scarce and valuable.

~Nemo (@ncerovac), SGV Member, Daedalus Angels

Super ad targeting enabled by crypto and ZK-TLS

The adage that “half of venture dollars raised is spent in Google and Meta Ads” is still true, CAC for consumer companies is at ATHs, and Ad platforms are as saturated as ever. But, ZK-TLS changes the game, and a new era of acquisition will emerge. The first touch/last touch/multitouch attribution model will evolve. Brands will more easily than ever target users who have verified information, and for the first time, brands will be able to do “super targeting” for specific subset of users, i.e.: users who have “$X spent in groceries in Y store in the last 30 days + watched more than X minutes of content from A, B or C influencers.” Combining different data points from the online/onchain lives of users, all verified, and monetized via ZK data protocols onchain. We’ve made 2 investments in this wave, and plan to do more.

~Morning Mist (@0x_Mist), SGV Co-founder

SocialFi stays bullish (but looks different)

SocialFi is still a bullish direction for token-driven social orchestration platform even though many of them change the solution after years’ exploration.

~Blake Gao (@BlakeGao), SGV Member

Humans become paid infrastructure for AI agents

The 2026 shift is humans working for AI agents, not as employees, but as paid infrastructure. Scouts surface deals for AI venture funds like ADIN and earn carry. Users turn on location services to improve hyperlocal algorithms and get paid per data point. Curators flag emerging trends AI can’t detect and collect bounties when their taste performs. The inversion is complete: where we built AI to assist human workflows, we’re now building micro-labor markets where humans handle the last-mile tasks, edge cases, and context that agents can’t, and get compensated directly from agent-owned wallets in real time. Call it human-powered AI infrastructure, and it’s paid and verified onchain.

~Lawson (@lwsnbaker), SGV Member, M&A Growth at @Relayzero

We over-indexed on revenue - 2026 corrects it

We’ve over indexed on revenue as an industry and that will become realized in 2026, small products/teams shouldn’t be laser focused on revenue and certainly shouldn’t be burning revenue to burn tokens.

~FireEyes 🔥_🔥 (@fireeyesgov)

The Rise of Gen Z and Gen Alpha Founders

Building on the 2025 emergence of young, internet-native founders, 2026 will mark the year this cohort truly cracks the code on sustainable growth. Gen Z and early Gen Alpha entrants deeply understand virality, attention economics, and meme-driven distribution, but many 2025 launches relied heavily on hype. In 2026, we’ll see breakout successes where these founders convert viral moments into sticky user retention and real product-market fit. Expect a wave of consumer apps (social tokens, AI-powered games, or onchain communities) that feel intuitively built for mobile-first, short-attention-span audiences. This generation’s edge in cultural fluency will drive mainstream adoption, proving that virality can evolve into lasting ecosystems rather than fleeting pumps.

~Jakub (@jakub_rusiecki), SGV Co-founder

Web3-native consumer brands break out

Some native Web3 companies will come to be the leading one in the top list of consumer brands like Pudgy Penguins and more.

~Blake Gao (@BlakeGao), SGV Member

“Allocation airdrops” become real: access replaces freebies

2026 is the year that ‘allocation aidrops’ become a real thing, where based on usage of an app or onchain history, etc. Users will get allocation to buy into an ICO (basically the ability to purchase tokens replaces airdrops).

~FireEyes 🔥_🔥 (@fireeyesgov)

Subscribe

The foregoing material is provided to professionals of Social Graph Ventures LLC and solely for the purpose of such individuals’ evaluation of the investment opportunity described herein. This material is not intended to provide any person with investment advice or any recommendation regarding the appropriateness or merit of any investment for such person on an individual basis. These materials are not intended to create any investment advisory relationship.