The era of synchronized altcoin growth has come to an end, according to analysts at Delphi Digital. By 2026, capital will concentrate in projects with proven value and demand-driven products.
— Delphi Digital (@Delphi_Digital) January 13, 2026
Experts suggest the market is transitioning from a speculative phase to one where structural demand and real economic activity play a leading role.
The sector faces pressure from three factors:
- Competition for resources. Sectors like AI, robotics, and biotechnology are drawing capital and skilled personnel.
- Liquidity concentration. The main flow of funds is directed towards ETFs based on Bitcoin and major altcoins.
- Supply growth. Upcoming token unlocks worth $3 billion will exert additional pressure on prices.
In such conditions, investors will gravitate towards projects supported by exchange-traded funds, revenue, and buyback programs, as well as applications that address specific user needs.
“The winners will be those teams that can build sustainable competitive advantages in segments where real economic activity occurs,” predicted Delphi Digital.
Perp-DEX as the “New Wall Street” and Other Forecasts
Specialists anticipate that in the coming year, perp-DEX will increasingly displace traditional financial institutions. They believe these will become a unified universal infrastructure, replacing the fragmented TradFi stack.
Hyperliquid is already building a native credit market. Such platforms can simultaneously act as a broker, exchange, custodian, bank, and clearinghouse “within a single smart contract.”
Delphi Digital also highlighted the following key trends for 2026:
- AI agents will begin transacting through protocols like x402 and ERC-8004, creating autonomous economies;
- prediction markets will become TradFi infrastructure;
- platforms that generate demand for stablecoins will take a share of the revenue from their issuers;
- unsecured DeFi lending will cease to be a risky experiment and become a reliable financial infrastructure thanks to technologies like zkTLS;
- the tokenized forex segment will attract even more users;
- Bitcoin and gold will become the main assets for hedging against national currency devaluation risks;
- crypto exchanges will transform into “super apps”;
- privacy infrastructure will catch up with demand.
Earlier, a16z crypto analysts forecasted growth in prediction markets and ZK-proofs.