Last year had a political shift that helped bring in a new wave of institutional building. Much of this work has focused on making existing systems reliable, compliant, and usable by institutions, particularly in the areas of stablecoins and payment coordination systems.
Here are five sectors that are likely to see greater focus, liquidity, and adoption going forward.
1. Stablecoins as a Global Payment Layer
One of the developments would be the use of stablecoins as a global payment layer built on crypto infrastructure, while remaining largely abstracted from users.
Over the past two years, stablecoin transfer volumes have exceeded those processed by Visa.
This shows that stablecoins are already operating as a parallel financial system rather than a theoretical alternative.
At the same time, TradFi companies are beginning to integrate crypto-based settlement into their existing payment rails. As this continues, application layers such as wallets, cards, and consumer platforms are likely to remain the primary point of user interaction, while stablecoins handle value transfer in the background.
Several blockchain networks are also beginning to issue their own native stablecoins to capture and accrue value generated by the activities on their networks, and more ecosystems will likely look to internalize settlement and liquidity.
2. Perpetual Markets and Asset Concentration
Perpetual futures markets account for a large portion of onchain trading activity. However, most of this activity is concentrated in a small number of assets.
Roughly 80% of all perps volume comes from Bitcoin. Around 15% comes from other major assets, while the remaining 5% is spread across smaller tokens that tend to experience short periods of activity before fading.
This pattern highlights that while new assets continue to appear, liquidity and sustained usage remain concentrated in established markets.
In addition to crypto-based perpetuals, equity-based perpetual products are beginning to emerge. Some platforms like Hyperliquid, tradexyz , RobinhoodApp and a couple of others have integrated or intend to offer exposure to traditional equities through crypto native systems.
3. Privacy and Confidential Transactions
As institutional participation increases, privacy has become a requirement.
Organizations need to protect sensitive transaction details while still allowing verification and compliance.
Confidential transactions are designed to meet this need. Rather than providing full anonymity, these systems allow transaction data to remain private while still being verifiable by authorized parties.
Several chains like Aptos and Sui have announced plans to integrate confidentiality into their tech stacks. This infrastructure will become an important part of future onchain systems, particularly for enterprise and institutional use.
4. Prediction Markets
Prediction markets continue to grow in usage and activity. A key change is that they are increasingly embedded into existing applications rather than operating as standalone platforms.
This integration makes them easier to access and use. They are being applied as tools to reflect shared expectations and sentiment across a range of topics, rather than as isolated products.
5. AI and Agent-Based Systems
AI agents and automated services are still early in development. Many approaches are being tested, and there are not too many single dominant models yet.
Crypto infrastructure provides tools for coordination, verification, and incentive design within these systems. The efforts of builders right now are focused on building dependable components that support more complex interactions over time, especially in payment and service networks.
A Word for Builders
As these systems mature, attention shifts from infrastructure to application and execution. For startups building in this environment, three objectives remain consistent.
→ Build a product that people want. The product should address problems that matter to users.
→ Second, build a community around the product. A strong community helps with feedback, distribution, and trust. When possible, this community should benefit from network effects, where the product becomes more valuable as participation grows.
→ Third, give ownership to the community. Ownership can help bootstrap early adoption and align incentives between builders and users.
The next phase is likely to be defined less by new ideas and more by how effectively these systems are combined, scaled, and tested in concrete use cases.