In the first part, I focused on Messari's structural arguments surrounding L1 valuation traps, chain abstraction, AI agents, derivatives, and DePIN. In the second part, the discussion will shift from growth narratives to internal tensions within cryptocurrency systems—specifically, Ethereum's positioning, the evolution of stablecoins, and the importance of maintaining a skeptical attitude when reading institutional research reports.

These chapters are less about where capital is going and more about where capital is flowing away. I want to further explore the subtle loss of value in certain areas and why some long-standing assumptions may no longer hold.

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The Identity Crisis of Ethereum

One of the most striking parts of the report is Messari's in-depth exploration of Ethereum's strategic dilemma. The report poses a thought-provoking question: Is Ethereum gradually becoming the "settlement garbage dump" of its own Layer 2 ecosystem?

To understand this concern, context is important.

The Ethereum Cancun upgrade and EIP-4844 introduced Blobs, significantly reducing the data availability costs for Layer 2. From the perspective of users and scalability, this upgrade has been very successful. Transaction fees have decreased, and the operational costs of Rollups have also significantly lowered.

However, these negative economic impacts are far from beneficial for Ethereum itself.

Before the introduction of Blobs, applications like Uniswap required users to transact directly on the Ethereum mainnet, consuming ETH and participating in fee burning. After the upgrade, most of this transactional activity has migrated to Layer 2, where fees are charged at the aggregation layer. Ethereum will still receive settlement fees, but only a small fraction of what it used to collect.

As a result, Ethereum's gas consumption has decreased, and the rate of ETH burning has slowed down. By 2025, this asset will shift from being deflationary to inflationary. This is not merely a technical footnote—it directly impacts Ethereum's monetary narrative.

Messari believes that unless Ethereum can restore its economic gravity through mechanisms such as shared sequencers, mainnet execution upgrades, or some form of native sharding, its valuation will increasingly rely on the narrative of "digital gold."

In this competition, Ethereum faces structural disadvantages. As a monetary asset, it cannot win in the competition. The success or failure of Ethereum depends on its simplicity, immutability, and brand clarity. If the execution layer relevance cannot be restored, Ethereum risks being squeezed by Bitcoin's monetary dominance and the application dominance of Layer 2 services.

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The Shift of Yield-Generating Stablecoins and Shadow Banking

Another major theme of the report is the transition of stablecoins from passive settlement tools to active yield-generating instruments.

Messari predicts that yield-generating stablecoins will increasingly eat into the market share of cryptocurrencies. The reason is simple: institutions are no longer willing to forgo a 5% risk-free yield to hold non-yielding dollars.

The report introduces the concept of "risk-free yield extraction." Historically, USDT holders effectively handed over their yields to Tether, which reinvested the reserves, raking in billions in profits each year. In a high-interest-rate environment, this inefficiency becomes glaringly obvious and cannot be ignored.

The protocol Ethena directly challenges this model. Ethena combines liquid staking tokens with delta-neutral hedging strategies, distributing the underlying yields to stablecoin holders. Importantly, USDe is set to be listed on major centralized exchanges in 2025, granting it true settlement functionality, rather than merely DeFi composability.

However, Messari does not overlook these risks.

Since USDe is a synthetic stablecoin backed by derivatives hedging, there is a structural risk of de-pegging in extreme market conditions. Its yields primarily come from two sources: staking rewards from LSTs and funding rates paid by perpetual futures traders.

In a bull market, long traders subsidize the entire system, allowing USDe holders to "collect rent." In a prolonged bear market, the flow of funds reverses, and the system must pay to maintain hedges. Therefore, yields are cyclical rather than fixed.

Messari's optimistic stance implicitly assumes that leverage demand will persist and that the Bitcoin market environment will remain favorable. The premium trends of LSTs are a noteworthy indicator; sustained distortions often signal rising pressures beneath the surface.

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Backtesting and a Healthy Skepticism

While Messari's research is deep and historically accurate, it should not be regarded as absolute truth.

As a research platform tied to institutional interests, Messari inevitably reflects the risk exposures and strategic preferences of its portfolio. The report maintains an optimistic tone throughout. For example, Solana's holdings are highly consistent with its disclosed positions. This does not negate the argument but does require a critical distance.

To verify this, I utilized AI-assisted analysis to backtest Messari's major predictions in recent years.

The results were mixed but quite enlightening. At the end of 2023, Messari predicted that Solana would be the only L1 token capable of truly challenging Ethereum, a prediction that proved to be very accurate, with SOL's price skyrocketing from around $20 to over $200 in 2024. Its relatively bearish stance on Ethereum was also validated, as the ETH/BTC price continued to weaken in 2025.

The predictions regarding DePIN were partially correct. Large projects like Render and Helium performed well, but many smaller projects ultimately failed. The predictions for stablecoins were even more accurate, with yield-generating stablecoins expected to become one of the most stable growth areas in 2025.

Overall, the hit rate was high—but not perfect.

This further emphasizes a broader point: the best way to interpret Messari's reports is as a directional compass rather than a trading manual. They excel at identifying structural shifts early but do not account for liquidity timing, narrative decay, or retail-driven reflexivity.

Different Timelines for AI Agents

One of Messari's boldest assertions is that by 2026, AI agents will dominate on-chain activity. Conceptually, this argument is quite compelling. Autonomous software cannot open bank accounts, requires 24/7 settlement, and naturally tends to use crypto-native monetary systems.

Where I remain cautious is in the timing.

Even today, on-chain delays and gas fees remain significant friction points. This applies not only to Ethereum but also to high-performance blockchains like it. For Solana, this cost structure is currently unworkable for thousands or even millions of high-frequency interactions by AI agents.

Each signature, each state update, each arbitrage attempt incurs real costs. As scale increases, these costs quickly become unbearable.

Therefore, I believe that 2026 is more likely to be a breakthrough year for AI infrastructure rather than a fully autonomous agent economy. Tokenization of computation, model validation, privacy-preserving inference, and decentralized verification feel closer to market maturity.

The true "native agent economy," where AI systems independently earn, consume, hedge, and reinvest capital on-chain, may still take another one to two years to realize.

But this does not mean that this field should be overlooked. Rather, it means that investment strategies should be selective. Instead of buying a wide range of narrative-driven AI tokens, focus on the hard infrastructure—the protocols on which AI systems operate. Must rely on, for example: architectures like BitTensor, particularly those optimized for model validation, performance scoring, or privacy computing.

Whether agents fully materialize in 2026 or 2028, these are closer to "hard currency" within the AI stack.

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Why Messari Still Deserves Respect

Despite these divergences, the overall value of Messari's work is undeniable.

The 2026 Crypto Technology Outlook is about 100,000 words long, spanning 275 pages. To better understand its focus, I used AI technology to estimate the weight of each chapter based on its length. The results are thought-provoking.

Messari's true emphasis lies in the following three chapters: Chapter 3 (Cryptocurrency), Chapter 1 (Investment Trends), and Chapter 5 (Infrastructure and Multi-Chain World). Together, these three chapters form the conceptual framework of the report.

This is not coincidental. These chapters correspond to asset definition, survival rules, and execution efficiency—three levels that determine who can survive when narratives fade.

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Chapter 3: The Ultimate Use of Assets

Chapter 3 is the most important part of the entire report. Its core objective is to define… the ultimate asset identification as one of the most important tools for cryptocurrency.

Here, Messari attempts to prove that Bitcoin has completed its transition from a speculative risk asset to a reserve asset. In this framework, Bitcoin is no longer the last resort for venture capital but is becoming a must-have asset allocation.

This aligns closely with my own macro research direction. Bitcoin has historically occupied an extreme position on the risk spectrum. Today, it increasingly resembles an alternative reserve—while volatility certainly exists, its structure is fundamentally different from growth tokens or venture capital.

The unresolved question is no longer whether Bitcoin should be included in a portfolio, but rather how much debate centers on the allocation ratio.

In contrast, Ethereum is depicted as still unformed. Its pricing dilemma reflects uncertainty about whether it is a commodity, a settlement asset, or merely the infrastructure rent for secondary servers. Meanwhile, stablecoins are viewed as monetary weapons—tools capable of exporting yield, liquidity, and influence across borders.

This chapter provides the most direct intersection of cryptocurrency with real-world capital flows, regulation, and macro policy. For this reason, it is more important than any purely "Web3 narrative."

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Chapter 1: The Paradigm Shift from Narrative to Accounting

If Chapter 3 defines assets, then Chapter 1 defines survival.

Messari believes that by 2026, the cryptocurrency market will have completely transitioned from "storytelling" to "accounting." The era of infinite token subsidies masking weak demand is coming to an end. Instead, the DF model—a framework designed to eliminate artificial growth and identify truly intrinsically motivated protocols—will take its place.

The formula is simple yet brutal:

DF = (Organic Growth Rate / Incentive Subsidy Rate) × Capital Efficiency × Cross-Industry Penetration Rate

Each component is meticulously designed and merciless.

The ratio of organic to subsidized yields acts as a dehydration filter. If a protocol's total locked value (TVL) grows tenfold, but the token issuance grows twentyfold, its DF score will plummet. This indicates that the project is driven by resource extraction rather than sustainable development.

Capital efficiency measures how much economic activity a protocol generates for every dollar of liquidity invested. High capital efficiency systems can turn one dollar into ten dollars of transaction volume or revenue. Low capital efficiency systems waste capital on vanity metrics.

Cross-industry penetration may be the most important long-term variable. Does the protocol only serve crypto-native users, or can it also meet external demand? DePIN selling computing resources to AI companies or RWA protocols introducing traditional funds score much higher than internal loop protocols.

Essentially, the DF model is not about growth—it is about wealth redistribution. It will ask whether a protocol changes who gets rewarded or merely redistributes incentives among insiders.

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Chapter 5: Efficiency Determines Victory

The infrastructure chapter concludes with a sobering realization: blockchain competition is no longer a contest of technical superiority but a contest of friction.

From a technical perspective, most public chains are "good enough." The real distinction lies in how effectively they eliminate user pain points. Wallet management, gas fee abstraction, cross-chain complexity—these are the bottlenecks hindering capital inflow into the cryptocurrency space.

Messari believes that blockchain abstraction is the key to victory. Which ecosystem can most effectively hide complexity will not only attract crypto-native users but also draw in capital migrating from traditional financial systems.

This aligns with what I mentioned in previous analyses about marginal capital: capital that is unwilling to learn about cryptocurrency but is willing to use it if friction disappears.

What determines victory is efficiency, not ideology.

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What to Watch and What to Delay

Based on Messari's framework—and adjusted with my own skepticism—the priority order becomes clearer.

In the short term, the focus should remain on Layer 1 ecosystems that can control liquidity flows or effectively achieve on-chain abstraction. Staking perpetual tokens serve as a strong bridge between DeFi and global markets, with real fee potential. DePIN is worth watching, provided its external revenues can be verified. Yield-generating stablecoins will continue to challenge the existing stablecoin market, although they also carry cyclical risks.

AI agents are worth keeping an eye on—but patience is required. In the next phase, infrastructure is likely to outperform application-layer agents.

Crucially, all of this analysis remains confined to the cryptocurrency realm. The most important factors determining yields still lie outside these chapters, hidden in the longest and most impactful sections of the report: the interactions between cryptocurrency and real-world capital.

This is also where my broader research focus lies, as well as the emphasis of the next series of reports—such as the outlook for positions and Coinbase's market predictions—becoming important supplements.

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Conclusion

Messari's "2026 Crypto Technology Outlook" is not without its flaws. It carries institutional biases, overly optimistic assumptions, and an overly aggressive timeline. Yet it remains one of the few documents capable of accurately predicting structural changes before they reach consensus.

Read dialectically. Understand the framework. Question the timing.

Because in the cryptocurrency space, the future is often defined early—but profits belong only to those who enter neither too late nor too early.

The above views are referenced from @Web3___Ace

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