Coinbase’s VC division outlines crypto ideas it plans to fund next year, 2026

Coinbase’s VC division has unveiled nine crypto ideas/projects that it plans to fund in the course of next year. Coinbase Ventures seeks to invest in developer teams involved in trading terminals, next-generation DeFi, asset tokenization, advancing agentic AI, and specialized exchanges.

Coinbase Ventures emphasized that the next protocols and companies to break out big will emerge from these categories. The VC added that it is actively looking to invest in ideas under these categories, come next year. Pitchbook claims that Coinbase Ventures has invested in over 618 initiatives since 2018, and its portfolio includes about 422 startups. 

The VC’s latest investment was on November 18 in a DeFi compliance platform called Oxbow. It had previously invested in ZAR and Zynk (payment infrastructure firms) and Kalshi (prediction market platform) in October. Kinji Steimetz, working in Ventures at Coinbase Ventures, expects perpetual futures contracts to be among the new avenues for RWA (real-world assets) exposure.  

Coinbase Ventures breaks down the nine categories 

Coinbase Ventures urged any developers/builders in the following areas to get in touch (including through X DMs). The VC is actively looking to invest in RWA perpetuals, as well as specialized exchanges and trading terminals, AI and robotics, and next-generation DeFi. 

Under the “Specialized Exchanges and Trading Terminals” category, the VC will focus on alternative prop-AMMs and prediction market trading terminals. It will also focus on the composability of perpetual markets, unsecured credit lending, and on-chain privacy under the “Next-generation DeFi” category. 

“We are seeing a surge of developer energy focused on privacy-preserving assets (e.g., Zcash) and DeFi applications (e.g., private orderbooks, borrow/lend, etc) and dedicated blockchains for payments touting privacy as a raison d’etre.” 

–Ethan  Oak, investor at Coinbase Ventures

Under the robotics and AI category, the VC will focus on robotics & humanoid data collections, proof of humanity, and AI for on-chain security & development.

Jonathan King, another investor at Coinbase Ventures, believes the opportunity squarely lies in agentic tooling. King claims that this agentic tooling will make the security/risk management and development of smart contracts as accessible as current web building. 

The Coinbase Ventures investor also noted that the development of smart contracts is about to hit its moment on GitHub Copilot. He further noted that AI agents might democratize on-chain building, generating smart contract code in hours rather than months. The AI agents will also handle continuous monitoring and security reviews. 

Steimetz says perpetual futures contracts will create synthetic exposure

Steimetz said he expects new avenues for RWA exposure to emerge through perpetual futures contracts, noting that they would create synthetic exposure to off-chain assets. He also stressed the increasing importance of prop-AMMs (proprietary automated market makers). Steimetz believes prop-AMMs represent an innovative exchange design that aims to prevent bots and traders from exploiting liquidity providers.

Meanwhile, King projects that prediction market platforms will rise in popularity. He envisions them becoming the dominant interface layer that will consolidate fragmented liquidity, reaching nearly $600 million. He also believes they will be providing a blended view of real-time event odds across multiple sources and venues.

On the other hand, Coinbase Ventures stated that it will support builders driving the on-chain economy forward or taking significant risks. The VC also asserted that all the identified ideas represent where the company sees massive potential. These ideas will unlock an explosion of on-chain experiments and apps.

The Head of Coinbase Ventures, Hoolie Tejwani, also chimed in. He says that the combination of open-source developer standards, biometrics, and cryptographic signing will be essential in establishing a proof-of-humanity solution. He also added that his company’s proof of humanity solution would support multiple approaches to increasingly complex projects. 

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