Hey Edge readers,

2025 is coming to a close, and let’s be honest, it may have not been the year in crypto we all expected in terms of price action. However it doesn’t mean that everything from it was a let down. There have been a lot of narratives cooking under the hood to make DeFi and Web3 a friendlier and more mature environment.

In this edition of Edge, just like last year, we have prepared a list of key trends to follow in 2026. Stablecoins adoption, vaults revolutionizing DeFi and much more so make sure you don’t miss this one.

Stay sharp. 🫡

-The Exponential team

Disclaimer: This content should not be taken as financial advice. Always do your own research before making any investment decisions.

Vaults

• Vaults become the default UX for yield: The market shifts from “pick a pool” to “pick an outcome.” Vaults package allocation, rebalancing, and ongoing risk work into a single deposit, so users buy a risk profile instead of managing positions. Standard interfaces reduce friction for wallets, aggregators, and lending collateral. This is how vaults move from niche DeFi to default rails inside fintech Earn products.

  Vaults that can adapt will win. The best designs can add or remove markets, move across chains, and update allocations within predefined limits. This lets vault products keep up as liquidity and incentives shift, without forcing users to constantly migrate manually.

• Curators become the new distribution bottleneck: Curators act like noncustodial asset managers. They set strategy rules, caps, and risk parameters, but never take custody. In 2026, curator credibility will be a product feature. Track record, stress behavior, clear allocation methodology, and communication will matter as much as net APY.

• Institutions push the market toward permissioning and risk segregation: As more compliant, cash-like yield options come onchain, users and institutions will expect verifiable yield with strong guardrails. Expect growth in allowlisted vaults, policy driven risk caps, and clearer separation between strategy roles and control roles. This makes vaults easier to distribute at scale and raises the bar for operational security and disclosure.

RWAs

• Tokenized T-bills and money market funds become the onchain base rate: The biggest RWA wedge is still short-duration government paper packaged as tokenized funds. It is simple, regulated, and useful as a yield benchmark for the rest of DeFi. We are also seeing these products move from “nice to have” into core infrastructure as they get used as reserve assets and as collateral in DeFi.

• RWAs shift from “tokenized asset” to “usable collateral”: A big 2026 unlock is not issuance, it is integration. When tokenized funds can be posted for margin and lending, they start competing with stablecoins and major LSTs as default collateral. The BlackRock and Securitize BUIDL example getting accepted as collateral is the clearest signal of where this is going. 

• Regulation and legal structure become the differentiator: More jurisdictions pushed stablecoin and crypto policy forward in 2025, with several planning more concrete frameworks in 2026. That should help institutions engage, but it also raises the bar on reserve quality, disclosures, and redemption mechanics. At the same time, regulators are explicitly warning about tokenization-specific risks like confusion over what investors legally own and added issuer counterparty risk.

Perp DEXs

• Perp DEXs keep closing the gap with CEXs and are evolving into decentralized super apps: Perp DEXs are narrowing the performance gap by using CLOB style markets on dedicated chains or hybrid designs. By late 2025, decentralized perp venues like Hyperliquid were putting up open interest and daily volumes that rival large centralized derivatives exchanges. In 2026, the trend to watch is whether that share keeps compounding, especially as more traders treat onchain perps as a primary trading venue.
  
  The leading venues are bundling spot, perps, lending, and yield so users can trade while their collateral earns. Coinbase Ventures highlights perp DEX volumes hitting around $1.4T monthly, which supports the idea that these apps are becoming full ecosystems rather than single feature exchanges.

• Composability drives the next wave of product innovation: Perps are moving beyond standalone trading apps into composable DeFi markets. The headline example is perps integrating with lending, so collateral can earn yield while still backing leveraged positions. This is a clean capital-efficiency story that perps can uniquely enable onchain.

Prediction Markets

• Prediction markets mature from novelty into information infrastructure: Prediction markets are increasingly used less as “betting products” and more as tools for aggregating expectations. As liquidity deepens and market design improves, these markets start producing signals that can compete with polls, analyst forecasts, and expert commentary.

• Edges decentralize as participation broadens: One of the defining traits of prediction markets is that anyone with specialized knowledge can contribute. In 2026, we expect more niche markets where expertise, not capital size, determines success.

  We recently covered Prediction markets in our last Edge edition so if you want to know more about them, make sure you check it out here!

• Better UX and native integration drive adoption: Prediction markets are becoming easier to use as interfaces improve and markets are embedded directly into wallets, trading apps, and information platforms. Clear market framing, simpler settlement flows, and better liquidity presentation reduce friction for non-expert users. As prediction markets get packaged into familiar products, adoption is driven less by curiosity and more by utility.

Neobanks/Stablecoin payments

• Neobanks turns crypto onboarding into a single familiar flow: Crypto-native neobanks dramatically reduce friction by bundling onramps, wallets, trading, and payments into one interface. Users can hold, buy, sell, and most importantly spend crypto or stablecoins without juggling multiple apps or tools. This unified UX lowers the barrier for everyday users and makes crypto feel closer to a modern financial app than a niche technical product.

  Many neobanks like Tuyo even offer VISA cards that you can use anywhere paying with your stablecoins avoiding any type of off-ramping.

• Idle capital stays productive without sacrificing liquidity: Unlike traditional savings accounts, crypto neobanks can offer access to competitive yields while keeping funds usable at all times. Stablecoins and crypto balances can earn yield in the background, without lockups or cooldown periods, while remaining available for payments or transfers. This reframes yield from a separate activity into a default feature of holding money.

• Neobanks create a bridge from TradFi to onchain finance: By abstracting complexity, neobanks give non-crypto-native users a practical entry point into the ecosystem. Many users may interact with crypto protocols for the first time through a neobank, without explicitly seeking out DeFi. This makes neobanks one of the clearest paths for crypto to move from early adopters to mainstream usage.

The final YO FLOW of the year and the Annual YOverview 2025.

As the year wraps up, the team is taking a well-deserved Christmas break. It’s a chance to step back, recharge, and reset before coming back in 2026 with all systems firing.

🔗 YO FLOW WEEKLY.

🔗 THE ANNUAL YOVERVIEW 2025 BLOG.

In the news 🗞️

• Solana, Pump.fun Execs Sued Over Alleged ‘Insider-Rigged Casino’: Investors have sued executives tied to Solana Labs and Pump.fun, alleging a coordinated scheme that rigged memecoin markets against retail traders. A judge has allowed plaintiffs to amend the case after lawyers claimed access to 5,000 private messages showing engineers discussing insider advantages, including transaction prioritization via Jito software. Defendants deny wrongdoing, calling the claims speculative, as the lawsuit seeks damages and potential shutdowns of the platforms.

• Lido DAO Secures $26B by Adopting Whitehat Safe Harbor Agreement: Lido DAO has adopted the Whitehat Safe Harbor Agreement, enabling approved white-hat hackers to legally intervene during exploits to protect its $26B in staked assets. Developed by Security Alliance, the framework now covers over $45B across 20 DeFi protocols, including Aave and Uniswap. The move comes amid rising crypto crime, with more than $2.5B stolen from crypto services in 2025.

• Synthetix Unveils Perpetual DEX on Ethereum Mainnet: Synthetix is launching a perpetual futures DEX on Ethereum using a hybrid onchain–offchain CLOB to reduce latency and gas costs. The exchange will debut with BTC, ETH, and SOL perps offering up to 50x leverage, supported by the Synthetix Liquidity Provider vault funded by sUSD holders. The move positions Synthetix as a rare mainnet-based competitor in a perp DEX sector that recently hit $340B in weekly volume.

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