The Agentic Future (12.23.25): Predictions for 2026; AI Edition
AI is the defining technology of this era. By 2026, rapid breakthroughs will push adoption to scale, creating a growing need for onchain verification in AI and robotics
This Crypto AI newsletter consists of three parts:
Snippet Partner (Khala Research)
Market Overview
Emerging Developments
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This week’s partner is a little different — it’s my own research product, Khala Research, which will be launching in the new year.
I’ve set up the Khala Research X account for anyone who wants to follow along ahead of the first report (link).
If you’ve found my crypto × AI × robotics analysis in this newsletter and on X useful, Khala Research is a more strfuctured, in-depth extension of that work.
The first report will drop in early January and will focus on decentralised robotics — the convergence of crypto, AI, and robotics. It’s a theme I believe will evolve into a major narrative heading into 2026.
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AI Roundup
Decentralized AI (“DeAI”) mindshare has held steady at 29% this week:
Robotics showing a resurgence as the segment features in several 2026 predictions.
a) DeAI Market Cap
The overall DeAI market cap is down $1.6B (-6%) this week, consistent with the choppy broader crypto price action:
Beldex (BDX) once again stands out this week as the privacy narrative continues to be a focal point coming into 2026.
Bittensor (TAO) sees a 17% sell off following its halving; a potential sell the news event as investors accumulated into the halving date last week. Could we see the forward looking supply crunch on emissions eventually catch up?
Note: You’ll see below as part of my 2026 predictions that there will be several of the 128 subnets that hit mainstream adoption within their respective industries.
b) Robotics Market Cap
The Robotics market cap fell by $12m (-2%) to $742m this week:
Despite the overall dip in market cap, there were a few protocols that bucked this trend; AUKI and GEODNET performed well this week, as those protocols already earning revenues seem to be more buoyant than the other market participants:
AUKI: Auki uses posemesh tech with a view to creating the “real world web”. The latest 2025 recap highlighted a strong year & PMF whereby they signed its first 7-figure client this year, and is likely to be one of the few crypto robotics entities that pushes into hardware.
GEODNET: Similarly GEOD has seen QoQ growth with projected ARR in excess of $7m as it effectively monetizes its network of RTK geospatial stations around the globe.
c) 2026 Crypto AI & Robotics Predictions
Agentic Commerce will continue to gain traction as x402 + ERC 8004 + Proof of agency enable trillions of autonomous micropayments
Prediction AI will enhance its capabilities alongside the growth in prediction markets. My bet is on automated arbitrage strategies between platforms, or even automated market maker positions providing liquidity for retail to speculate on a broader set of markets. The earlier solutions will be indicators for opportunities, before the ability to automatically execute trades is rolled out broadly. Polymarket and Kalshi will no doubt launch their own app chains (including tokens).
Simplistic, boring tasks will be automated. Crypto smart contract audits or basic coding requirements will be done well. Once you have many single tasks being automated well, then you can layer in the collaborative element to enhance complete workflows.
Decentralized Robotics will 10x; I mean in both activity and capital flowing into this ecosystem. The entire industry segment is below a billion dollar market cap, and robotics is a mainstream focus. This is unlikely to be a focus on hardware given the capital constraints, but more likely the data.
Crypto (DePIN/DePAI) protocols will become very good at modelling edge cases by leveraging its distributed structure. Have individuals contribute a breadth of data that will plug the gaps for traditional AI models. Thus offering a useful revenue model for the expanding robotics industry.
An AI protocol will reach the top 10 crypto tokens by market cap. Yes that means one will be ahead of Cardano, god forbid. I suspect we will see multiple in the top 20 of which I anticipate one is yet to come to market.
DePIN will have its glory moment. Many of these have been building distributed infrastructure for years and are beginning to see the benefits now. Take GEODNET as an example; continual quarter on quarter revenue growth - now up to $7m ARR. These protocols will compliment the robotics boom.
The Bittensor Ecosystem will have several key breakout subnets that find real product market fit. The value accrual of these commercial real word contracts will be dependent on how the team defines the split to token versus equity.
Crypto will return to the limelight through privacy and verification in an age of AI where data is proliferated artificially. Humans will crave authenticity and privacy.
Tokenization of RWAs will ramp up significantly. The world will eventually come onchain, which includes tokenization of GPUs and Industrial power plants to meet AI’s insatiable demand for compute and electricity.
Synthetic data solutions will become increasingly good with “World Models” catching the limelight. Real world data will be a shrinking portion of what
Neo Banks will integrate agentic solutions more deeply, whether this is through optimized swapping solutions or agentic payment rails to offer enhanced crypto products. Tether will likely IPO and further bolster its AI capabilities given Circle, VISA and Mastercard doubling down on agentic commerce.
Tokenization of IP will click into place, bringing several recognizable NFTs back into the limelight as the use of AI to proliferate an abundance of UGC ushering a whole new creator economy
Vibe coding tools will level up significantly, enabling single person businesses to develop many products that compliment crypto independently or with minimal coding experience. Think drag and drop websites or custom user interfaces
Base will launch a network token, with a focus on rewarding Base app users. My bet is this will be first out the gate after the Clarity Act goes through (tabled for January 2026). I suspect we will see all the stops pulled out to see this token hit top 10 by market cap — that means $10bn+
2. Crypto AI Agent Analysis
A) Nansen Smart Capital Flow Analysis
Nansen’s smart net capital flows show several protocols with more than $150k:
The virtuals eco sees inflows with PAYAI and REPPO doing $400k of combined inflows as agentic commerce continues to ramp up its activity with the new iteration (version 2) of x402. Coinbase highlights that x402 payments in the past 30 days have hit $50m with PayAI the second largest facilitator behind Coinbase:
sUSDAI sees more inflows to their AI (GPU) yield backed dollar as the protocol partners with PayPal for PYUSD to become a settlement asset
3. AI Agents Developments: Innovations and Market Developments
Here are some other interesting Crypto AI related developments this week:
December 22nd: Link
The following news is included:
Vaneck suggests the AI bubble has already popped, but with a hard refresh before the next leg up?
Tether_to Releases QVAC Genesis II, Expanding the World’s Largest Synthetic Educational Dataset to 148 Billion Tokens
gensynai $AI token sale concludes with 7,412 participants, $16M committed and $473M closing FDV
programmer reveals x402 V2 to evolve internet-native [agentic] micropayments with greater flexibility and power
a16z released 17 crypto predictions for 2026, including “know your agent” and that we can now use AI for substantive research tasks. Proof of agency will become invaluable to differentiate the good and bad agents
Datavault AI Inc. (NASDAQ: DVLT) announced the issuance of two U.S. patents for blockchain-driven content licensing and tokenized monetization systems
FractionAI_xyz goes live on the base app including all of its AI features with full functionality
Bitcoin miner “Hut 8” Executes $7B AI Datacenter Deal with Google Backstop
Waymo (autonomous vehicles) experience shutdown following recent power outage in the U.S. Tesla robo taxis keep their lights on
Solana based DePIN project fuseenergy announced a $70M Series B funding round led by lowercarbon and balderton, valuing the company at $5B.
CheckCanopy posts his first X message using his BCI Neuralink - things really are getting dystopian. Does sending emails from one neuralink to another count as telepathy?
openservai published the SERV research paper on BRAID; their proprietary reasoning architecture; this included up to 122× cost efficiency + performance gains on frontier models (incl. GPT-5)
ambient_xyz testnet went live with more demand than anticipated. Ambient is a PoW L1 supplying hyperscaled verified inference on a 600B+ parameter model, backed by a16z, Delphi and Amber group
ConsumerFi goes live with its Season 2 rewards, including 100million $CFI with a focus on Intelligent Finance with kinsuapp as the main partner
PayPal PYUSD Partners with USDai_Official for AI Infrastructure Financing
yieldseekerxyz launches partnership with merkl_xyz for boosted 14-18% automated yields on your stables
AI-powered Web3 social and dating platform metyacom completed $50M strategic funding led by United Century United Holdings
NEARProtocol token is now tradable on Solana shortly after 0xMert_ shows his support for NEAR
BioProtocol releases a Shopify for research-backed health products
That’s a wrap for issue 156 of S4mmy’s Snippets. I hope you enjoyed it.
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Disclaimer: The content covered in this newsletter is not to be considered investment or financial advice. It is for informational and educational purposes only.
I hold some of the assets and have partnerships with some of the projects mentioned in this newsletter.
awesome read