TL;DR
- a16z crypto says 2026 will push crypto beyond tokens, using markets, proofs, and verifiable commitments to strengthen trust.
- It expects prediction markets to list more contracts and scale truth resolution with decentralized governance, LLM oracles, and AI agents.
- It also predicts zkVM provers will cut SNARK overhead to about 10,000X, enabling verifiable cloud computing, while “staked media” uses lockups, onchain histories, and settled markets to prove credibility.
Crypto is entering 2026 with a widening mandate, according to a16z crypto’s “3 ways crypto goes beyond crypto” outlook. Instead of treating tokens as a self contained asset class, the firm argues the next phase links crypto rails to information, verification, and credibility across the internet. The throughline is practical: markets that surface real time odds, proofs that verify computation, and media that can demonstrate skin in the game. In this framing, crypto becomes infrastructure for trust, not merely a venue for price discovery and trading narratives. For builders, that means new interfaces and incentives.
— a16z crypto (@a16zcrypto) January 8, 2026
Prediction Markets, Proofs, and Staked Media Point to “Beyond Crypto” Utility
Prediction markets, a16z says, will get bigger, broader, and smarter as they intersect with crypto and AI. More contracts should expand beyond major elections into granular outcomes, turning markets into part of the news ecosystem. Scale also raises hard questions about how contracts resolve, especially when outcomes are contested, as seen in disputes like the Zelensky suit market and the Venezuelan election market. The post points to decentralized governance plus LLM oracles, and even AI agents that scour signals for edge. Here, resolution at scale becomes the product challenge. Transparency and auditability are core goals.
A second shift is technical and cross industry. The post argues SNARKs are moving beyond blockchains as zkVM provers cut overhead from roughly 1,000,000X to about 10,000X, with memory footprints in the hundreds of megabytes. That is described as fast enough for phones and cheap enough to run widely. One reason 10,000X matters: high end GPUs have about 10,000X more parallel throughput than a laptop CPU, so a single GPU could generate proofs of CPU execution in real time by end of 2026. In this view, verifiable cloud computing becomes practical. No code changes required.
Finally, a16z forecasts the rise of “staked media” as AI makes it cheap to generate unlimited content from any persona, real or fabricated. The answer is not performative neutrality, but cryptographic tools that enable publicly verifiable commitments through tokenized assets, programmable lockups, prediction markets, and onchain histories. A commentator can publish an argument and prove they are putting money behind it; a podcaster can lock tokens to show they are not opportunistically flipping; an analyst can tie forecasts to markets that settle publicly. In this model, credibility is backed by checkable stakes. Alongside other media.
