The top DeFi trends to watch out for in 2026

Last year, DL News tried to predict the top three DeFi trends for 2025.

We predict that traditional finance will enter DeFi at an unprecedented rate, more protocols will launch their own blockchains, and financial technology firms will incorporate DeFi into their offerings at scale.

Well, we did quite well.

In 2025, we’ve seen banks launch stablecoins, asset managers allocate billions of dollars to DeFi lenders, and Wall Street firms pile into tokenized assets.

In January, Coinbase kicked off the fintech integrations with its Morpho-powered Bitcoin lending. In June, trading titan Robinhood began using Arbitrum to facilitate tokenised stock trading for European users.

And just two weeks ago, $75 billion neobank Revolut integrated Uniswap, the largest decentralized exchange, for run-up, swaps and crypto purchases.

When it comes to custom blockchains, it’s not just DeFi protocols that are launching it now. Fintech firms are also entering the fray, with Stripe’s upcoming Tempo blockchain being the most notable example.

These trends are probably not over, and should only grow in the coming year.

But as 2025 draws to a close, we’ll try to predict three more trends that will shake up DeFi in 2026.

United stablecoin layers

If there was one trend that defined DeFi in 2025, it was stablecoins.

Dollar-linked tokens in circulation rose to more than $300 billion as everyone from family office executives to US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent issued lofty predictions for exponential growth.

But for all the success, stablecoins suffer from a major obstacle to their continued adoption: liquidity fragmentation.

The largest stablecoins are spread across many different trading venues, blockchains and exchanges. This spread makes it more difficult for traders to execute large orders efficiently, leading to higher transaction costs, greater price swings and reduced market efficiency.

In 2026, we predict that stablecoin issuers will make significant progress in solving this problem by building out and promoting the adoption of unified liquidity layers.

Many stablecoin issuers have already started.

Circle has its Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol. It lets developers transfer USDC across blockchains with native burn and coin.

Similarly, Tether, the largest stablecoin issuer, launched USDT0, an omnichain stablecoin that functions as a single asset that operates across multiple blockchains.

If those firms are successful, “stablecoin transfers and conversions become more capital efficient, cheaper and more predictable,” Jascha Samadi, co-founder of Greenfield Capital, a crypto startup, told DL News.

DEXs rival CEXs

For the longest time, there was a trade-off in using decentralized exchanges. Although permissionless, DEXs have sacrificed liquidity and price competitiveness compared to their centralized counterparts.

In 2025, that changed. Improved user experience, intent-based trading and dark AMM models on Solana have made some DEXs just as, if not more, competitive than centralized exchanges.

At the same time, traders are getting tired of centralized exchange failures.

In May, Coinbase revealed that cybercriminals bribed and recruited a group of rogue overseas support agents to steal customer data to facilitate social engineering attacks.

Then in October, Binance issued an apology and refunded users $283 million after the exchange’s system unfairly shut down users’ trades during a period of high volatility.

Others complained more generally about centralized exchanges suffering from technical glitches, limiting accounts without warning and problems dealing with customer service.

Over the past year, the proportion of crypto trading conducted on DEXs has grown rapidly. As of November, DEXs accounted for just over 21% of all crypto trading, their highest percentage ever, according to an analysis by CoinGecko using DefiLlama data.

We predict that this trend will continue. Next year is probably too early for DEXs to overtake centralized exchanges in absolute trading volume. But they could reach 50% of all crypto trading by the end of 2026.

Privacy push fuels adoption

This year, privacy has risen to become one of the biggest themes in DeFi.

Privacy-focused blockchain Zcash blew away the rest of the market in the last three months of the year with an 860% nosebleed rally that saw its ZEC token reach $711 in November, its highest price since 2016. It has since fallen back to $395.

Elsewhere, the Ethereum Foundation has announced an expanded effort to build privacy into the $284 billion blockchain.

Advocates argue that crypto-privacy is important to ensure the personal safety of those who use the technology. Just as people don’t want their traditional bank statements made public, users often don’t want their entire financial lives exposed on blockchains either.

For institutions dipping their toes into DeFi, the lack of built-in privacy leaves them with a dilemma, according to those behind Canton Network, a blockchain designed for institutional finance.

Get the benefits of using blockchains, but at the risk of exposing pricing, strategy or sensitive investment positions, or stick with slower, less efficient traditional rails.

Canton isn’t the only one making that case, either.

Privacy-friendly security features, such as private multi-signature wallets, are a prerequisite for many institutions looking to make the leap, Alan Scott, co-founder and contributor to the Railgun privacy protocol, previously told DL News.

Our final prediction is that the adoption of privacy-focused protocols and blockchains will continue in 2026, more blockchains – such as Ethereum – will introduce their own privacy infrastructure, and these developments will spur a new wave of institutional adoption.

Tim Craig is DL News’ Edinburgh-based DeFi correspondent. Reach out with tips at [email protected].