Quick take:
- The company said it believes RWA perpetuals offer a structurally faster and more flexible path than tokenization to real-world assets exposure.
- Coinbase Ventures is also targeting alternative Prop AMMs, an emerging model on Solana that protects LPs from predatory flows by only allowing liquidity to be executed through aggregators.
- Another area of focus is prediction markets, which were among the best-performing segments in crypto this year. Coinbase believes prediction market aggregators could transform that sector.
Coinbase Ventures, the venture arm of the Nasdaq-listed crypto exchange company Coinbase Global (COIN), has revealed its investment plans for 2026. According to a blog post on the Coinbase website, the venture arm is actively looking to back teams building around asset tokenization, specialized exchanges and trading terminals, next-gen DeFi, and AI and robotics.
Expanding further on its key target verticals for 2026, the company said it believes RWA perpetuals offer a structurally faster and more flexible path than tokenization to real-world assets exposure.
“Enabled by recent improvements in perpetual DEX infrastructure, RWA perpetuals create synthetic exposure to off-chain assets through perpetual futures contracts,” Coinbase wrote.
The firm is also targeting proprietary automated market makers (Prop AMMs), highlighting an emerging model on Solana, which it says protects LPs from predatory flows by only allowing liquidity to be executed through aggregators.
Coinbase is also looking to back projects looking to disrupt the prediction markets space. The company believes that, like DeFi before, the current state of prediction markets is fragmented, which it believes could be an obstacle to achieving its potential.
The firm sees an answer in aggregation. The company expects prediction market aggregators to emerge as “the dominant interface layer, consolidating $600M+ in fragmented liquidity and providing a unified view of real-time event odds across venues.”
Another vertical that Coinbase Ventures will be keeping an eye on is the perpetual futures markets, with the company expecting protocols to expand utility features by enabling traders to simultaneously hedge, earn, and leverage without sacrificing liquidity.
While there has been talk of an AI bubble, Coinbase seems to be more optimistic about the space, as it expects growth to continue, driven by segments like robotics and humanoid data collections, proof of humanity (digital IDs), and AI for on-chain development and security.
Stay on top of things:
Subscribe to our newsletter using this link – we won’t spam!
