The top DeFi trends to watch out for in 2026

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

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

Well, we did quite well.

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

In January, Coinbase kicked off the fintech integrations with its Morpho-powered Bitcoin loans. 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 biggest decentralised exchange, for onramping, swaps and crypto purchases.

As for tailor-made blockchains, it’s not just DeFi protocols launching them now. Fintech firms are also entering the fray, with Stripe’s upcoming Tempo blockchain being the most notable example.

These trends likely aren’t over, and should only grow over the coming year.

But as 2025 draws to a close, we’ll take a shot at predicting three more trends set to shake up DeFi in 2026.

Unified stablecoin layers

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

Dollar-pegged tokens in circulation soared to more than $300 billion while everyone from family office managers to US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent issued lofty predictions for exponential growth.

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

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

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

Many stablecoin issuers have already started.

Circle has its Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol. This lets developers transfer USDC across blockchains with native burning and minting.

Similarly, Tether, the biggest stablecoin issuer, has launched USDT0, an omnichain stablecoin that functions as a single asset that works 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 venture firm, told DL News.

DEXs rival CEXs

For the longest time, there was a tradeoff in using decentralised exchanges. While permissionless, DEXs sacrificed liquidity and price competitiveness compared to their centralised counterparts.

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

At the same time, traders are growing weary with centralised exchange failures.

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

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

Others have complained more generally about centralised exchanges suffering from technical glitches, restricting accounts without warning, and difficulties dealing with customer support.

Over the past year, the proportion of crypto trading conducted on DEXs has grown quickly. As of November, DEX’s accounted for just over 21% of all crypto trading, their highest percentage ever, per an analysis by CoinGecko that used DefiLlama data.

We predict this trend will continue. Next year is likely too soon for DEXs to overtake centralised exchange in absolute trading volume. But they could hit 50% of all crypto trading by the end of 2026.

Privacy push fuels adoption

This year, privacy surged 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 a 860% nosebleed rally that saw its ZEC token hit $711 in November, its highest price since 2016. It has since slumped back to $395.

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

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

For the 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.

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

Canton aren’t the only ones making that case, either.

Privacy compatible security features, like private multi-signature wallets, are a prerequisite for many institutions looking to make the jump onchain, according to Alan Scott, co-founder and contributor to the Railgun privacy protocol, previously told DL News.

Our final prediction is that in 2026, adoption of privacy-focused protocols and blockchains will continue, more blockchains — like Ethereum — will launch 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 tim@dlnews.com.