The Shining Stars Of 2026: Best New Popular Crypto Projects

In Brief

Crypto is exiting the 2025 shakeout with real usage holding up, and the likely “shining stars” of 2026 are projects providing essential cash rails, AI compute, modular infrastructure, and information systems rather than pure speculation.

The end of 2025 has been a rough one for crypto. Prices cooled after a monster run, leverage got flushed, but on-chain activity, stablecoin volumes and DeFi usage quietly kept performing decently. A new cohort of projects is setting up for a much bigger role in 2026, not just as speculative bets, but as core infrastructure for money, AI, and the open web.

What Makes a “Shining Star” in 2026?

In 2017, “new and popular” mostly meant ERC-20 tokens that could tell a good story. In 2021, it meant DeFi TVL and NFT floor prices. For 2026, the bar is different. Across reports from VC giants like a16z, a few common traits keep showing up:

• Real usage: transaction volume, active users, or integration into other protocols
• Clear role in the stack: money, data, compute, identity, or security
• Credible teams + funding: not anon devs vanishing after launch
• Staying power through drawdowns: projects that kept shipping in 2024-25

With those traits in mind, here are the sub industries to watch, including a few projects for each.

The New Cash Layer

Ethena (USDe / ENA)

Ethena is trying to answer a simple question: can you build a “dollar” that lives entirely on crypto rails, without parking cash in banks? Ethena’s USDe is a synthetic dollar backed by crypto collateral (BTC, ETH, etc.) plus delta-hedged futures positions. Instead of T-bills in a bank account, it balances spot and derivatives to stay near $1.

Why it’s a star:

• USDe has already grown into one of the largest dollar assets on-chain.
• Staked USDe (sUSDe) turns those funding rates + staking rewards into yield, making it a kind of “on-chain dollar savings account”.
• It’s crypto-native, composable across DeFi, not dependent on a single bank.

Why it’s risky:

• The October 2025 depeg. USDe briefly traded as low as $0.65 on one major CEX during a market crash, showed that synthetic dollars inherit derivatives risk and liquidity risk, not just smart-contract risk.
• The system is complex. You’re effectively betting that Ethena can manage basis spreads, exchange risk, and counterparty risk better than the market fears.

Ondo Finance (ONDO)

On the opposite side of the spectrum you have tokenized Treasuries like Ondo’s OUSG and USDY: boring in a good way.

• Ondo wraps short-term U.S. Treasuries and bank deposits into tokens that live on public chains, with yields in the ~4.50-5% range in mid-2025, similar to the underlying T-bills.
• Its TVL has exploded from around $40M to roughly $1.6B by late 2025, making Ondo one of the largest RWA platforms.
• Ondo Nexus is working on 24/7 redemption into stablecoins like USDC, tightening the loop between TradFi and DeFi.

This is the “safe yield” side of the 2026 narrative. Staid, regulated assets wrapped in crypto form factors and used as collateral across DeFi and CeFi.

AI x DePIN

If 2020-21 was about DeFi, 2025-26 is very much about DePIN + AI, which are decentralized physical infrastructure powering machine learning workloads.

Aethir (ATH)

Aethir runs a distributed GPU cloud aimed at enterprise-grade AI and gaming clients. In the first half of 2025 alone, it delivered 955M+ compute hours across more than 430k GPU containers, and by Q4 it reported infrastructure in 90+ countries, 200+ locations and 435k+ containers, with ARR above $140M. So this isn’t just a whitepaper network. It’s selling real compute to paying customers.

Why it’s interesting:

• It turns idle or distributed GPUs into a globally accessible compute pool.
• It sits at the intersection of AI demand shocks, GPU shortages, and crypto incentives.
• It’s already integrated with other infra projects (including restaking and rollup ecosystems).

Render (RENDER)

Render started as a decentralized rendering network for 3D graphics and VFX. It’s now leaning hard into AI and real-time compute:

• The Render Network connects creators needing GPU power with node operators who rent out their hardware, backed by the RENDER token.
• The 2026 roadmap focuses on scaling compute subnets for AI/ML workloads and expanding enterprise integrations.

Together, Aethir and Render sit at the sweet spot where GPU supply meets AI demand, but with crypto-native incentives. If the “internet becomes the bank,” these networks are the ones turning it into the world’s shared supercomputer as well.

Modular & Restaked

The story of L1s used to be “who has the fastest chain?” In 2026, the more interesting question is: who offers the best shared infrastructure for thousands of chains and apps?

Celestia (TIA)

Celestia is the flagship modular data availability (DA) network: instead of doing execution + consensus + DA in one monolithic chain, it focuses on consensus + DA and lets rollups / appchains handle execution. Developers can:

• Launch custom rollups or sovereign chains that publish their data to Celestia.
• Get high-throughput “blobspace” without bootstrapping their own validator set.
• Scale beyond the constraints of single-chain gas markets.

If a16z is right and blockspace starts to look like commodity infrastructure, Celestia is one of the networks that can aggregate demand from many chains instead of competing as yet another monolith.

EigenLayer (EIGEN)

EigenLayer, built on Ethereum, introduces restaking, letting stakers and LST holders reuse their staked ETH to secure additional services (AVSs) in exchange for extra yield. Think of it as a marketplace for trust:

• Protocols can “rent” Ethereum’s economic security instead of launching their own token + validator set.
• Stakers can earn layered yields, but also take on layered risk if an AVS fails and gets slashed.

Celestia + EigenLayer are a good snapshot of where infra is going:

• DA networks turning into neutral “data utilities”
• Restaking markets turning ETH security into something composable and reusable

If you want to understand the 2026 infra meta, watching TIA and the restaking ecosystem is a solid starting point.

Identity and Prediction Markets

Beyond finance and infra, some of the most controversial and popular projects sit at the intersection of identity, information, and incentives.

Worldcoin (WLD)

World (formerly Worldcoin) is attempting a global proof-of-human network: biometric verification via the Orb, a privacy-preserving World ID, and a WLD token that ties it all together. In 2025 it expanded its eye-scanning hardware and launched more ID pilots with governments and institutions, pitching itself as a defense against bots, deepfakes, and AI spam. Whatever you think of the trade-offs, it’s clearly one of the most ambitious “identity + crypto” experiments live today.

Polymarket

Prediction markets went from niche to mainstream in 2024-25. Polymarket, one of the most prominent platforms, has processed tens of billions in cumulative volume, with 2025 alone estimated around $18B according to several analyses. Why this is important:

• For big elections, macro events, and even pop culture, markets are now often more accurate than pundits, because they aggregate information into prices.
• a16z’s 2026 piece explicitly calls out prediction markets as a key frontier, especially when combined with AI oracles and better governance.
• We’re also seeing a push on the regulatory side: new coalitions and licensed markets (e.g., Kalshi, Gemini’s CFTC-approved platform) are lobbying for clearer rules as volumes explode.

How to Build a 2026 Watchlist

You don’t need to buy everything here (in fact you probably shouldn’t). But if you want to track where the puck is going, you can organize your watchlist around themes instead of tickers:

Cash lLayer & RWAs

• Ethena (USDe / ENA), Ondo (ONDO), major stablecoins and tokenized T-bill platforms.
• Watch metrics like supply growth, depeg events, on/off-ramp integrations, and yields relative to TradFi.

AI Compute & DePIN

• Aethir (ATH), Render (RENDER), and competing GPU networks.
• Track active clients, compute hours, and revenue growth, not just token price.

Modular Infra & Restaking

• Celestia (TIA), EigenLayer and the restaking ecosystem.
• Follow rollup launches on Celestia, DA usage, and the number/value of AVSs secured via restaking.

Identity & Information Markets

• World / WLD, Polymarket and other prediction markets.
• Keep an eye on regulatory developments, volume growth, and real-world integrations (media, research, governance).

Then, Apply a Few Simple Rules

• Start from use case, not hype. If you can’t explain what a project actually does in one sentence, skip it.
• Check who uses it when prices are down. Survivors of bear phases usually have something real going on.
• Size positions by risk. Core infra and cash-layer plays belong in a different bucket from presale memes.
• Always assume you can lose 100% on any single token. Plan accordingly.