What drove the fundraising trends in 2025, and what narratives are investors betting on for the future?

A confluence of structural forces — regulatory developments, macroeconomic shifts, technological breakthroughs, and evolving user demand — underpinned the patterns we’ve discussed. These factors also inform the market narratives that VCs are coalescing around as we approach 2026. Below, we outline the key drivers and emerging narratives:

Macro & Regulation → Capital Rotation

The 2025 funding pattern reflected a clear alignment of regulation, macro conditions, and product readiness. As jurisdictions clarified rules (Singapore, HK, EU; later the U.S. via ETFs and policy shifts), capital rotated into compliance-heavy sectors — custody, CeDeFi, payments, RWA — and reopened the door for institutional-sized late-stage rounds.

With rates peaking and liquidity stabilizing, investors moved out the risk curve, producing fewer deals but larger tickets, concentrated in verticals where policy clarity + macro carry + institutional distribution intersected.

Infrastructure Maturity → Capital Moves Up the Stack

By 2025, Ethereum L2s, new L1s/appchains, modular stacks, and production-grade middleware removed the bottlenecks of earlier cycles. Infra deals split into:

• Scale-out infra (late-stage L1/L2, mining, compute, data)
• Frontier infra (ZK, On/Offchain, interop)

As infra became “good enough,” capital shifted upward into exchanges, asset managers, payments, RWA, and prediction markets — the layers that convert scalability into real users and revenue. These five sub-sectors absorbed ~50% of all capital raised 2023–25.

Product-Market Fit: Stablecoins, RWA & Info Markets Lead

By 2025, PMF was decisive. • Stablecoins & payments: strongest global PMF; multi-billion late-stage rounds. • RWA & structured yield: tokenized T-bills, credit, commodities moved from pilot → distribution. • Prediction markets/InfoFi: treated as core market infrastructure, not speculation. Meanwhile, low-PMF sectors (metaverse, forks, token-first social) saw capital vanish; gaming/NFT funding shifted to studios and infra. The funding bar heading into 2026: real users, real revenue, real retention.

Institutionalization & the CeDeFi Convergence

The 2025 capital stack became institutional. Large crypto-native funds, banks, sovereign wealth, and corporates wrote the biggest checks — mainly into regulated exchanges, asset managers, custody, payments, mining, and prediction markets.

They preferred equity-like structures, compliance rails, and RWA/CeDeFi products aligned with existing financial distribution. IPOs and M&A re-emerged, pushing late-stage capital toward CeDeFi, where licensed entities combine CeFi scale with on-chain settlement.

By 2026, late-stage activity will cluster around CeDeFi, RWA, stablecoins/payments, and regulated information markets, while early-stage funding continues seeding AI, ZK, DePIN, and next-gen infra.

Sectoral Narratives Shaping 2026 > Gate Ventures’ vision

Outlook: A Higher-Quality, Narrative-Driven Growth Phase

Pulling these drivers together, the 2026 outlook is cautiously optimistic but clearly quality-biased. If 2023–24 was about survival and balance-sheet repair, and 2025 was about rebuilding confidence and recapitalizing the core rails, then 2026 is set up as a pragmatic growth year:

• Total funding can plausibly exceed 2025’s levels, but with continued concentration in fewer, larger, institutionally-owned deals.
• The marginal dollar is more likely to go into CeDeFi, RWA, Yield optimization, Payment/FX rails, regulated exchanges, prediction markets, compliance/identity infra than into speculative consumer apps or unsustainable tokenomics.
• Narratives around AI agents, BTC ecosystem expansion, DePIN, and decentralized social will drive early-stage experimentation, but capital will reward those that clearly connect to the core financial stack rather than purely to hype.

For funds and LPs, this environment rewards clear thematic maps and disciplined underwriting: understanding where each sub-category sits in the regulatory, macro, and infra stack; sizing exposure accordingly; and treating narratives as capital allocation frameworks, not just marketing. If regulation and macro stay broadly constructive, the bets placed in 2023–25 on the rails — stablecoins, CeDeFi, RWA, prediction markets, and compliant infra — are likely to form the spine of the next expansion phase in crypto venture.

About Gate Ventures

Gate Ventures, the venture capital arm of Gate.com, is focused on investments in decentralized infrastructure, middleware, and applications that will reshape the world in the Web 3.0 age. Working with industry leaders across the globe, Gate Ventures helps promising teams and startups that possess the ideas and capabilities needed to redefine social and financial interactions. Website | Twitter | Medium | LinkedIn

Disclaimer:

The content herein does not constitute any offer, solicitation, or recommendation. You should always seek independent professional advice before making any investment decisions. Please note that Gate Ventures may restrict or prohibit the use of all or a portion of the services from restricted locations. For more information, please read its applicable user agreement.