Coinbase Ventures’ 2026 Thesis: The ‘Perpification’ of Assets and AI Agents

Coinbase Ventures has solidified its 2026 investment thesis, signaling a pivot from generic infrastructure to high-utility financial abstraction and autonomous AI. The venture arm, which manages a portfolio of 422 startups across 618 investments, released a roadmap identifying nine critical sectors for the year, headlined by a push for synthetic exposure to real-world assets (RWA).

The ‘Perpification’ of Everything

The core of the thesis focuses on RWA Perpetual Derivatives. Coinbase Ventures anticipates a shift where traders seek synthetic exposure to off-chain assets, such as private equity valuations or commodities, without the friction of custody. Kinji Steimetz, a General Partner at the firm, termed this the "perpification of everything," noting that composable perpetual markets will likely decouple risk from ownership.

This financialization layer extends to Proprietary Automated Market Makers (Prop-AMMs). Unlike standard AMMs, these venues are designed to shield liquidity providers from toxic flow and arbitrage bots, a necessary evolution for institutional capital entering on-chain markets.

The AI & Identity Stack

In the AI sector, the roadmap targets AI Agents capable of generating smart contracts and conducting security reviews, democratizing access for non-technical builders. However, as AI-generated content floods the network, the firm argues that "Proof of Humanity", protocols verifying biological identity via cryptography, will become the de facto standard for sybil resistance, will become the de facto standard for sybil resistance.

Unlocking Institutional Credit

Moving beyond over-collateralized lending, the roadmap bets on unsecured credit-based money markets. The thesis posits that blending on-chain reputation with off-chain data will finally allow under-collateralized borrowing to scale, a critical step for corporate debt markets to migrate on-chain.

"Prediction market aggregators [will] emerge as the dominant interface layer consolidating $600 million in fragmented liquidity."

The firm also highlighted prediction markets, specifically aggregators that can unify liquidity across disparate venues like Kalshi and Polymarket, creating a single, capital-efficient view of event odds.