IOSG Internal Memo (Part 2): From Market Clearing to Finding the Next 10x Track

Author: IOSGVenturesTeam

This is the second half of “IOSG Internal Memo (Part 1): How Do We Bet on Mainstream Assets in 2026?”

Entry Point for Financial Literacy: Super Apps and Tokenization

Macroeconomic tailwinds and regulatory clarity have laid the foundation, but large-scale adoption requires channels. The next wave of growth in crypto will be driven by two complementary forces.

Major Tech Companies Bring New Users: Large tech firms will play a key role in promoting crypto adoption. For these companies, crypto offers a path to become super apps—platforms that integrate payments, social, and financial services. X and Meta are both exploring crypto integration. A social media company based in the US with global reach is likely to become the “Trojan Horse” for the adoption of stablecoins worldwide. Its effect will be to channel liquidity from bank balance sheets and small economies into digital dollars.

Tokenization Creates New Asset Classes: To support the growth of stablecoins, the on-chain ecosystem needs a richer variety of assets. Relying solely on native crypto funding opportunities cannot support a tenfold increase in stablecoin scale. To balance the equation, better connections are needed between off-chain and on-chain worlds. Tokenization of traditional assets (stocks, bonds, etc.) is precisely this bridge. Ultimately, on-chain native asset issuance represents the future of finance. Institutions like Robinhood and BlackRock will play critical roles in this transition.

The World Belongs to the Young Generation: The forces above—currency devaluation, regulatory shifts, corporate adoption—each operate at their own pace. But there is an underestimated tailwind: intergenerational wealth transfer and the younger generation’s preference for digital assets.

▲Main references: Federal Reserve, UBS Global Wealth Report 2025, Cerulli Associates 2024, Gemini State of Crypto 2024, YouGov 2025, State Street Gold ETF Impact Study 2024

Z-generation data are estimates (the Fed combines Z and Millennials); limited survey data: the proportion of young people holding crypto assets is rising sharply. About 45% of Z-generation hold crypto, compared to only 20% holding gold—completely opposite to Baby Boomers’ preferences. An obvious counterargument is that younger generations are simply more risk-tolerant. But this overlooks a deeper reality: internet natives have fundamentally different perceptions of value compared to older generations. As hundreds of trillions of dollars of wealth transfer from Baby Boomers to younger generations over the coming decades, asset allocation preferences will also shift.

Conclusion: In the short term, crypto markets will continue to be driven by familiar macro factors: Federal Reserve policies, AI stock sentiment, and overall risk appetite. Markets will remain volatile, headlines swinging between euphoria and despair. But the cyclical structural tailwinds described above will last much longer. Currency devaluation will not disappear; the weaponization of the financial system has created persistent demand for alternatives; regulatory clarity is finally arriving; the younger generation prefers crypto over gold; and the world’s largest tech and financial firms are building the infrastructure needed for mainstream adoption. The question is not whether crypto will take a larger share of global financial assets, but how fast this transition will happen—and which assets within the ecosystem will benefit most.

3. The Zero-Sum Game: How Can the Altcoin Market Break Out

The altcoin market has faced its toughest year. To understand why, we need to look back at decisions made years ago. The 2021-2022 funding bubble led to a wave of projects raising large amounts of capital, many of which are now in their token issuance cycles. This created a fundamental problem: a flood of supply entering the market with almost no corresponding demand.

The core issue is not just oversupply, but that since the mechanism that caused this problem first appeared, little has changed. Projects continue to mint tokens, regardless of product-market fit (PMF), viewing token issuance as an inevitable milestone rather than a strategic decision. As VC funding dries up and primary market investments decline, many teams see token launches as their only way to raise funds or enable insider exits. This article will analyze the four-party deadlock destroying the altcoin market, examine failed repair attempts, and consider what a balanced state might look like.

Low Liquidity Deadlock: A Four-Party Zero-Sum Game

Over the past three years, the industry has relied on a deeply flawed mechanism: low-circulation token issuance. Projects issue tokens with extremely low circulating supply—often just a few percent—to artificially maintain highly inflated fully diluted valuations (FDV). At first glance, this logic seems reasonable: less supply equals more price stability. But low circulation cannot last forever. As more supply inevitably enters the market, prices collapse. Early supporters are penalized for their loyalty, as data confirms—most tokens perform poorly since launch.

Especially cunning is that low circulation creates a situation where everyone thinks they are winning, but in reality, everyone is losing:#中心化交易所以为通过要求更低流通和更多控制来保护散户。结果却是面对愤怒的社区和糟糕的价格表现。# Token holders believe that maintaining low circulation prevents insiders from dumping. The result is that true price discovery is never achieved, and early supporters are penalized. When they demand insiders hold no more than 50%, it actually inflates primary market valuations to unreasonable levels, forcing insiders to use—yes—low circulation strategies to sustain these valuations.#项目团队以为低流通操纵能让他们合理化高估值和最小稀释。但总体而言，如果这一趋势持续，这种做法将摧毁整个行业的融资渠道。#VCs think they can value tokens based on low circulation holdings, raising more funds. But as the flaws become more apparent, in the medium to long term, funding channels dry up.

This is a perfect four-party deadlock. Everyone believes they are playing a clever game, but the game itself is detrimental to all involved. Market reactions: Meme Coins and MetaDAO: The market has tried twice to solve this problem, both attempts revealing the complexity of token design. # First iteration: Meme Coin experiment: Meme coins emerged as a response to VC-backed low-circulation issuance. Their marketing was simple and enticing: 100% circulation on day one, no VC, fully fair. Finally, the game was no longer unfair to retail investors. But reality was much gloomier. Without any vetting mechanism, the market was flooded with unreviewed token launches. Solo operators, often anonymous, replaced VC-backed teams, creating environments where over 98% of participants lost money. Tokens became exit scams, with holders looted within minutes or hours of launch. Centralized exchanges faced dilemmas: not listing Meme coins would push users to bypass them and go directly on-chain; listing would invite blame when prices crash. Token holders suffered the worst losses. The only winners were the issuing teams and platforms like Pump.fun that captured large value.

**#****第二次迭代：MetaDAO模式。MetaDAO代表了市场的第二次重大解决尝试，将钟摆摆向另一个极端，大幅偏向代币持有者保护。其优势是实在的：# Token holders gain control leverage, making capital deployment more attractive; #内部人士只有达成特定KPI才能获得流动性；# opens new financing mechanisms in a capital-scarce environment: #Starting valuations are relatively low, offering fairer participation.

But MetaDAO overcorrected, creating new problems: #创始人过早丧失太多控制权。这造成了“创始人柠檬市场”——有资源、有选择的团队回避这一模式，而别无选择的团队则拥抱它。# Tokens are still in very early stages, highly volatile, but with even less vetting than VC cycles. #Infinite issuance mechanisms make it nearly impossible for top-tier exchanges to list. MetaDAO and centralized exchanges controlling most liquidity are fundamentally mismatched. Without CEX listings, tokens are confined to illiquid markets.

Each iteration attempts to solve problems for specific stakeholders, demonstrating the market’s self-correcting ability. But we are still seeking a balanced solution that considers all key participants—exchanges, token holders, project teams, and capital providers. The evolution continues; before reaching equilibrium, a sustainable model will not emerge. This equilibrium must satisfy all stakeholders—not by giving everyone everything they want, but by clearly delineating boundaries between harmful behaviors and legitimate rights.

What a Balanced State Looks Like

Centralized Exchanges: #必须停止：要求过长的锁仓期，这阻碍了真正的价格发现。延长锁仓制造了保护的假象，实际上损害了市场寻找公允价值的能力。# Have the right to: Predictable token supply schedules and effective accountability mechanisms. Focus should shift from arbitrary, time-based lockups to KPI-based unlocks, with shorter, more frequent releases tied to verifiable progress.

Token Holders: #必须停止：过度弥补历史上的权利缺失，要求过多控制权，从而赶走最优秀的人才、交易所和VC。不是所有内部人士都一样，对所有人要求同样的长锁仓期忽视了不同角色的差异，也阻碍了真正的价格发现。对某些神奇持股门槛（如“内部人士持仓不得超过50%”）的执念，恰恰制造了导致低流通操纵的条件。# Have the right to: Strong information rights and operational transparency. They should clearly understand the underlying business, receive regular updates on progress and challenges, and have honest communication about reserves and resource allocation. They should be assured that value is not lost through side trades or alternative structures—tokens should primarily be owned by IP holders, ensuring that created value belongs to token holders. Finally, they should have reasonable control over budget allocations, especially major expenditures, but not micromanage daily operations.

**Project Teams: #必须停止：在没有明确的产品市场契合点或令人信服的代币实用性的情况下发行代币。太多团队将代币发行为“美化版股权”，却享有更低的权利——相当于风险股权的劣后层级，却没有法律保护。代币不应仅仅因为“加密项目都这么做”或因为资金快耗尽而发行。# Have the right to: Make strategic decisions, take bold bets, and manage daily operations without submitting every decision to DAO approval. If they are responsible for results, they need execution authority.

**Venture Capitalists: #必须停止：强迫每家被投公司发行代币，无论是否合理。并非每家加密公司都需要代币，为了给仓位估值或创造退出事件而强推代币发行，已使市场充斥着低质量的发行。VC需要更加审慎，诚实评估哪些公司真正适合代币模式。# Have the right to: Reasonable returns for bearing the high risks of early crypto investments. High-risk capital should earn high rewards when successful. This entails fair ownership stakes, equitable token release schedules reflecting contributions and risks, and the ability to realize liquidity exits without demonization.

Even with a path toward equilibrium, timing is critical. The near-term outlook remains challenging.

Next 12 Months: The Last Wave of Oversupply

The next 12 months are likely to be the final wave of oversupply caused by the last VC bull run. After this digestion period, conditions should improve: by 2026, the previous cycle’s projects will have either issued tokens or gone bankrupt; funding remains expensive, limiting new project formation. VC-backed projects seeking to issue tokens have significantly reduced their reserves; primary market valuations have normalized, easing the artificial inflation of high valuations via low circulation. What we did three years ago has shaped today’s market. What we do today will shape the market in two to three years. Beyond the supply cycle, there is a deeper threat to the entire token model.

Existential Risk: Lemons Market; The biggest long-term threat is that the altcoin market becomes a “lemons market”—a market that excludes quality participants and attracts only those with no alternatives.

Possible Evolution Path: Failed Projects continue to issue tokens to gain liquidity or extend their lifespan, even without product-market fit. As long as the expectation persists that “projects should issue tokens, regardless of success,” failed projects will keep entering the market. # Successful Projects will choose to exit after observing the chaos. When top teams see that overall token performance remains poor, they may shift to traditional equity structures. If a successful equity company can be built, why suffer through the chaos of the token market? Many projects lack sufficient reasons to issue tokens; for most application-layer projects, tokens are becoming increasingly optional rather than necessary. If this dynamic persists, the market will be dominated by projects that cannot succeed through other means—those unwanted “lemons.” Despite these risks, there are strong reasons for optimism.

Why Tokens Can Still Win: Despite challenges, we remain optimistic that the worst-case lemons market scenario will not materialize. Tokens offer a unique game-theoretic mechanism that equity structures cannot replicate. They enable accelerated growth through ownership distribution. Tokens can implement precise distribution strategies and growth flywheels that traditional equity cannot match. Ethena exemplifies this by using token mechanisms to drive rapid adoption and create sustainable protocol economics. A passionate, loyal community forms a moat: if well operated, tokens can create a community with real stakes—participants become more sticky and loyal to the ecosystem. Hyperliquid is a case in point: its trader community becomes deeply engaged, creating network effects and loyalty that are impossible to replicate without tokens. Tokens can enable growth rates far exceeding equity models, while unlocking vast game-theoretic design space, which, if well managed, can generate enormous opportunities. When these mechanisms work, their disruptive power is truly transformative.

Signs of Self-Correction: Despite many challenges, encouraging signs show the market is correcting: top-tier exchanges are becoming extremely strict. Listing and onboarding requirements have tightened significantly. Exchanges are implementing better quality controls and more rigorous assessments before listing new tokens. Investor protection mechanisms are evolving. Innovations like MetaDAO, community-owned IP rights (as seen in Uniswap and Aave governance disputes), and other governance innovations demonstrate active experimentation with better structures. The market is learning—slowly and painfully, but it is learning.

Recognizing We Are in a Cycle: Crypto markets are highly cyclical, and we are currently in a trough. We are digesting the 2021-2022 VC bull market, hype cycles, over-investment, and the negative effects of structural mismatches. But cycles turn. In two years, once that wave of projects is fully digested, new token supply declines due to current funding constraints, and better standards emerge through trial and error—market dynamics should improve significantly. The key question is: Will successful projects revert to token models or permanently shift to equity? The answer depends on whether the industry can resolve conflicts of interest and improve project selection.

The Path Forward: The altcoin market stands at a crossroads. The deadlock among exchanges, token holders, project teams, and VCs has created an unsustainable situation. But this is not permanent. After the last supply shock of 2021-2022, the next 12 months will be painful. But after this digestion, three factors could drive recovery: emergence of better standards from trial and error; mechanisms that align interests among all four parties; and more cautious token issuance—only issuing when tokens can truly add value. The answer depends on choices made today. In three years, we will look back at 2026 as we do today at 2021-2022. What are we building?

4. Overview of Venture Capital Opportunities

The crypto ecosystem is undergoing a fundamental transformation. From initial experiments with digital currencies, it has evolved into a complex financial infrastructure increasingly overlapping with traditional finance and emerging technologies like AI, ultimately moving toward integration.

Stablecoins: Nearly Perfect Money, Missing a Key Link: Stablecoins have proven superior to traditional fiat in almost every dimension. Compared to traditional payment rails, they offer advantages in accessibility, usability, speed, portability, and programmability. Counterparty risk is comparable to traditional banking, and the technology itself provides clear advantages. However, a critical limitation remains: compared to fiat, stablecoins’ investment options are still limited. Traditional financial markets offer extensive productive investment opportunities—stocks, bonds, real estate, and alternative assets. Despite their technological advantages, stablecoins are constrained by crypto-native yield sources and investment opportunities, which alone cannot sustain a scale surpassing $1 trillion.

This is precisely why RWA (Real-World Assets) become crucial. RWA tokenization is the only viable path to expand the investment scope of stablecoin ecosystems, addressing their most pressing current challenge. Over time, this will lead to a convergence: nearly all assets will be issued, traded, and settled on-chain natively. Who is most likely to succeed? Traditional institutions like Robinhood and BlackRock have clear advantages here, having expressed willingness to tokenize more assets. But startups act faster and are more flexible in building on-chain native solutions, giving them a competitive edge. BackedFinance, leveraging Swiss legal innovation, launched XStocks—permissible, unpermissioned stock tokens accessible to anyone. Yet liquidity remains a challenge. OndoFinance has addressed liquidity issues but with more limited products. Liquidity, accessibility, and trust are key variables for success in this space.

DeFi Yield Challenges: From Fundamentals to Structured Returns: Historical data shows that for every $1 increase in stablecoin market cap, DeFi TVL (Total Value Locked) increases by about $0.6. This indicates most new on-chain funds are seeking yields. Growth of stablecoins themselves also depends on DeFi’s ability to generate diversified, scalable, and sustainable yields. The crypto ecosystem has gone through different yield-generation phases—from establishing crypto risk-free rates (like AAVE) to more advanced products. Each iteration requires stronger risk underwriting and offers higher value-add per deployed dollar. The current landscape features increasingly complex on-chain yields across multiple categories. We also see stronger interoperability and composability among DeFi protocols. The best example: Ethena<>Pendle<>AAVE strategies. In this setup, Ethena deposit tokens are split on Pendle into principal tokens and yield tokens. As long as the positive spread exists between AAVE borrowing rates and Ethena funding rates, principal tokens are used as collateral to borrow more on AAVE and redeploy into Ethena.

This shows that even familiar strategies, when deployed in new ways, can unlock unique opportunities. This should motivate more participants to tokenize broader yield products and leverage on-chain composability to access opportunities impossible in fragmented off-chain ledgers. Another opportunity: abstracting the complexity of on-chain yield products to create a DeFi channel that dynamically adjusts exposure across a broad DeFi landscape. This can be seen as an upgrade of Yearn’s original vision—successful DeFi vaults require more active management and risk underwriting. Projects like YuzuMoney are exploring this path.

Who is most likely to succeed? Execution capability is critical. Teams need deep financial engineering expertise, strong risk management, and crypto industry experience. Teams with all three are relatively rare.

Prediction Markets: Growth and Opportunities for Kalshi/Polymarket and Other Derivative Applications: We are optimistic about the growth prospects of prediction markets in 2026. Events like the World Cup and US midterms will bring significant traffic, especially with potential token generation events (TGEs), making trading volume growth promising. Sports betting will be a highlight, and as prediction market mechanisms mature, this vertical could see explosive growth and innovative gameplay. Another key trend is localization. Recently, more region-specific topics have appeared on Polymarket, especially issues relevant to Asian youth, contrasting with early US-focused markets. This indicates leading platforms are paying attention to cultural differences, creating new markets with substantial incremental value. Derivative products and tools, trading terminals, aggregators, and DeFi applications will grow rapidly alongside Kalshi and Polymarket. After both platforms emphasized ecosystem development in 2025, various tools, trading terminals, aggregators, and DeFi apps have expanded quickly. The opportunity is obvious: entrepreneurs are racing to market, product iteration is rapid, overall growth is expected, but it’s too early to declare winners.

Who is most likely to succeed? At the core platform level, challenging Kalshi and Polymarket directly is difficult. But the following areas are worth watching: #创新机制突破：杠杆交易、parlay（连串过关）、futarchy（未来治理）、长尾市场、新型预言机和结算方式等创新,可能打开差异化的生存空间。# Localization deepening: Focusing on crypto users and niche local markets is another path. Kalshi and Polymarket are just starting in this space and lack clear advantages. Teams with local cultural, regulatory, and user understanding have a real opportunity. # Winners in derivative ecosystems will emerge through rapid iteration—capturing user pain points and building network effects during ecosystem expansion.

Neobanks: Natural Beneficiaries of Stablecoin Adoption: The widespread adoption of stablecoins will fundamentally reshape banking, likely reducing the scale of traditional bank balance sheets and triggering chain reactions—though these are beyond this article’s scope. The key question: how will people manage their stablecoin balances? We believe this is unlikely to be done via personal wallets. Instead, Neobanks are poised to be the main beneficiaries of this trend. Understanding the opportunity requires understanding the demand sources and their nature.

There are three main user groups: crypto-native users, users in developing regions, and users in developed regions.

a. Crypto holders want access to capital markets, consumer options, yield opportunities, tax optimization, and credit services. Etherfi is already leading in this category but can improve in accessing capital markets, yield products, and credit offerings. b. Developing regions need access to USD-denominated financial systems, Visa/Mastercard networks, remittance channels, competitive savings rates, and credit. Redotpay currently leads in Southeast Asia, offering Revolut-like products via crypto infrastructure. Other regions present huge opportunities for localized solutions and microloan products that improve user retention. c. Developed regions, with mature financial infrastructure, seem to have fewer obvious opportunities. But as global leadership uncertainty rises, these users may turn to alternatives. This creates a triple market opportunity: Neobanks can serve very different customer needs using the same underlying stablecoin infrastructure.****

Who is most likely to succeed? Accessing capital markets requires innovative legal solutions and deep financial expertise. Providing credit demands financial engineering skills. Improving yield strategies requires crypto and DeFi expertise. Penetrating local markets depends on understanding local laws, markets, and cultures. These variables offer key differentiation opportunities for new entrants, especially if existing players fail to unlock these capabilities and expand services.

Evolution of Crypto Payments: The global payment system is being reshaped by crypto infrastructure, with large-scale adoption progressing along three channels. C2B (consumer-to-business) remains favorable to traditional finance, as crypto apps need to connect to existing Visa/Mastercard networks, which have built deep moats through extensive merchant coverage. The bigger opportunity lies in P2P (peer-to-peer) flows, as traditional financial transactions are expected to migrate to crypto infrastructure. Facing Neobanks, wallets, and big tech integrating stablecoins, Western Union appears to lack a strong moat for defense. B2B (business-to-business) may be the biggest opportunity: crypto payment providers can offer real alternatives for cross-border corporate payments. This represents a fundamental infrastructure shift, requiring deep integration of stablecoins with fintech platforms. The core value proposition is significant cost savings and speed improvements. But the challenge is establishing “last mile” liquidity and local compliance in key regions so clients can seamlessly connect to new solutions.

Who is most likely to succeed? For P2P payments, geographic focus and user experience are paramount: solutions that are ready for use, withdrawals, and spending will likely win. For B2B payments, companies with existing relationships with SMEs and large enterprises, and strong regulatory expertise, are best positioned.

Internet Capital Markets: The Endgame of Tokenization: Blockchain technology enables a single, programmable global ledger, with capital flowing 24/7, and tokenization allowing any asset to be identified, traded, and settled instantly across borders. The evolution of tokenization has gone through different meta-cycles: from initial cryptocurrencies, to tokens (like altcoins and digital assets), to NFTs and Meme coins, then to information markets (prediction markets), and now to stocks, RWAs, and broad financial derivatives. Looking ahead, frontier areas include collectibles (trading card games, high-end goods), attention and influence markets, and ultimately personalized tokens. As each new narrative emerges, specialized trading infrastructure follows. Crypto trading has evolved from basic Bitcoin exchanges (Binance, OKX, Coinbase, Huobi) to on-chain DEXs (Uniswap), aggregators (1inch, 0x), NFT marketplaces (OpenSea), terminals (Blur), Meme launchpads (Pump.fun), terminals (Axiom, GMGN, FOMO), PerpDEXs (Hyperliquid, Lighter), and emerging prediction markets (Polymarket, Kalshi) with their own infrastructure. Each meta-narrative requires tailored interfaces for retail users seeking simplicity and professional users needing advanced features. The current generation (perpetual contracts and prediction markets) offers significant VC opportunities as the market matures and integrates with traditional finance.

Who is most likely to succeed? Terminal and aggregator platforms require deep understanding of user workflows and excellent product design. Teams with trading backgrounds and technical depth have advantages in professional segments. For retail, consumer product expertise and growth marketing are more critical. Winners will be those that achieve the best balance between functionality and user experience for targeted segments, often building moats around liquidity aggregation or unique data/insights.

ICM: 2026 Token Mechanism Rebuilding: A key question for 2026: how will token tools evolve? The core issue with current crypto tokens is an imbalance in supply structure and flawed incentives, leading all participants—exchanges, tokenholders, teams, VCs—to a seemingly rational but actually harmful game. Tokens are used as fundraising and liquidity tools, not as product decision tools. This causes market distortions: mature projects have little motivation to maintain product operations after issuing tokens, or are distracted by token affairs, impairing product decisions. As a result, good projects simply stop issuing tokens, bad tokens crowd the market, and bad projects keep entering. Early projects issue tokens without PMF, then struggle to fundraise, and lack institutional support.

The ICM (Integrated Capital Markets) concept, proposed by the Solana ecosystem, is more generally about enabling better assets to be launched and maintained as good assets. These assets can include early-stage Web2/Web3 equity, pre-IPO/IPO stocks, etc. Achieving this requires breakthroughs in legal frameworks, market education, operational efforts, and mechanism innovation—including ownership coins, launchpads, etc. Making tokens better products—this is the crypto-native challenge for 2026.

Crypto and AI Fusion: Creating First-Class Digital Citizens: Perhaps the most compelling investment narrative will emerge at the intersection of crypto and AI. The existing internet and financial infrastructure are designed for humans, rendering AI as a “second-class citizen.” The infrastructure’s major limitations fundamentally restrict AI’s economic potential. Without crypto infrastructure, AIAgents face severe constraints—they cannot open bank accounts or make payments, relying entirely on humans for financial transactions. They are blocked by CAPTCHA and bot detection systems, unable to perform basic online interactions. They cannot interact with other agents to create an AI-to-AI economy. They cannot own assets. They are trapped in centralized servers or cloud environments, unable to migrate. Crypto fundamentally changes this: AI can become a first-class citizen with real economic agency. With crypto, AIAgents can own wallets, autonomously send and receive funds, earn, spend, and invest independently of humans. They can bypass most bot detection via distributed blockchain networks. They can autonomously discover other AI agents, negotiate, and trade, creating a nascent AI-to-AI economy, where economic interests and crypto-like consensus and trust mechanisms will determine right and wrong. They can sign contracts and execute payments programmatically. They can hold digital assets, with ownership enforced by immutable blockchain.

Google has promoted A2A protocols, providing an open standard for AIAgents to communicate, exchange information, and coordinate actions across platforms and providers, fostering interoperable multi-agent systems. But trust remains an issue—this is precisely what Ethereum’s ERC-8004 standard aims to address through on-chain identity, reputation, and verification, enabling AIAgents to discover, authenticate, and collaborate in decentralized economies without pre-established trust. These developments collectively unlock AI’s ability to participate in programmable, agent-driven business on blockchain.

Who is most likely to succeed? Entrepreneurs with the vision to architect decentralized economies will stand out—creating ecosystems where AIAgents interact trustlessly via protocols like ERC-8004. They excel at interdisciplinary innovation, seamlessly integrating cryptography (for secure, tamper-proof trust), economics (for designing aligned incentives, staking, penalties, and emerging markets), and system design (for scalable, interoperable architectures enabling open, cross-organizational agent coordination without gatekeepers).

Resource Aggregation Opportunities: The scaling laws driving AI development—more compute, more data, more parameters—are well-understood and empirically validated: more of each almost always leads to better models. This diagram distills the most important insights from the past five years:

Crypto excels at resource aggregation through carefully designed incentives. Its potential scale is remarkable: before the merge, Ethereum PoW miners provided roughly 50x the compute needed to train GPT-4. With proper incentives and coordination, this capacity is largely untapped. Data opportunities are equally significant. The crypto industry can aggregate proprietary data from individuals and enterprises at scale. Protocols like Grass enable distributed crawling and real-time info access over public networks, leveraging existing resources to better evade bot detection and improve unit economics. The challenge is not resource availability but effective coordination and quality control. With proper execution and incentive design, crypto has real potential to unlock vast resources for AI development—resources that are difficult or impossible to aggregate within traditional corporate structures.

Who is most likely to succeed? This requires deep expertise in distributed systems, AI infrastructure, and game theory design. Teams must solve challenges in verifying compute, assessing data quality, and coordinating at scale. Companies with backgrounds in large-scale infrastructure operations and crypto protocol design have the strongest advantage. Winners will be those that can achieve decentralized coordination at scale while maintaining quality standards.

Conclusion: The common thread behind these opportunities is convergence. Native crypto capabilities are increasingly merging with traditional finance, payments, and now AI acceleration. The isolated phase is ending; the overlapping, integrated phase is accelerating. Full integration is the ultimate goal: blockchain infrastructure will become “invisible” yet indispensable—serving as the underlying engine supporting next-generation financial and technological services, seamlessly blending decentralized and centralized systems, leveraging the strengths of both.

For venture investors, the real opportunity lies not in betting on “crypto” versus “traditional finance,” but in identifying companies building bridges, infrastructure, and application layers—those that will define this integrated future. The most successful startups will no longer see crypto as a parallel financial system but as an infrastructure layer: a foundation enabling programmability, global settlement, autonomous agents, resource coordination, and more—capabilities that are fundamentally impossible within traditional architectures.