Curve Finance founder Michael Egorov outlines why 2026 could mark stablecoins’ shift into core financial infrastructure and the next phase of on-chain finance.
Michael Egorov, Founder of decentralised protocols Curve Finance and Yield Basis.
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All throughout the previous year, we’ve seen signs that stablecoins are increasingly coming to behave less like a crypto category and more like financial plumbing in a more general sense.
Regulation around stablecoins is becoming clearer, particularly with the introduction of frameworks like the U.S. GENIUS Act. Usage is steadily expanding, and on-chain liquidity is maturing to the point where stablecoins can reliably support real economic activity. Overall, the market itself grows more grounded by the day.
At this point, the question is no longer whether stablecoins belong in the global financial system, but what role they are going to play, and which parties are going to be primarily responsible for boosting their adoption.
Figuring that out is where I believe the focus of 2026 will lie.
Adoption Will Continue From the Bottom Up
One fairly common assumption that I’ve seen from non-crypto natives in this market is that banks will be the primary drivers of stablecoin adoption. But in practice, it’s more accurate to say that the opposite is happening: usage is growing from the outside, through fintech products and crypto-native payment tools.
There are crypto cards, cross-border payment apps, and hybrid fintech products that already rely on stablecoins as their settlement layer. Platforms like Monerium and ether.fi are just a couple of examples of this trend, allowing people to send payments or store their money in ways that are faster and much more convenient than traditional rails.
Banks, of course, are also paying closer attention to stablecoins now – it is only natural. Stablecoins have simply grown too large to ignore by this point: by the end of 2025, the total market cap had already surpassed $300B.
But in most cases, banks are reacting to demand that already exists rather than creating it. That’s an important distinction, because it shows that their adoption of these instruments is being primarily driven by real user utility rather than mandates from the institutional side of things.
I strongly suspect this pattern will continue into 2026. There are certainly powerful moves that banks can make to accelerate this process, but stablecoins are gaining traction because they are reliable in practice, and that has always been and will continue to be the main reason for their broadening acceptance.
Payments and On-Chain Finance Are Splitting into Clear Roles
As the market matures, we can also see that the stablecoin ecosystem itself is taking on two complementary aspects and functions.
On one side, we have redeemable stablecoins that are used for payments, transfers, and everyday financial activity. These are the assets that plug into cards, merchant systems, and fintech apps. From a consumer perspective, this is what makes stablecoins usable at scale.
On the other side, fully decentralized stablecoins remain essential for on-chain finance. And while they are also technically usable in retail payments, their true focus lies elsewhere: in the powering of smart contracts, automated settlements, derivatives, and decentralized lending. Broadly speaking, they enable the financial logic to execute operations without intermediaries and without relying on off-chain guarantees.
It should be said that both models have value and are crucial in their own way. While consumer-facing stablecoins expand usage among the common audience, their decentralized counterparts provide the programmable foundation. Together, they make the system operational in practice.
Institutional Experiments Will Accelerate Quietly
In 2026, I expect that institutional experimentation with stablecoins will also be picking up the pace.
Market data already shows that plenty of banks are integrating stablecoins internally, while others are exploring stablecoin-like settlement instruments for interbank use. Central banks, particularly in Europe, are experimenting with wholesale CBDC models aimed at settlement rather than consumer payments.
If these systems eventually come to operate on public blockchain infrastructure, the implications would be significant. It would mean that parts of the global financial system start relying on open, programmable rails rather than closed correspondent networks, influencing how value moves behind the scenes.
This layer may not be immediately obvious, since it’s not consumer-facing in nature, but this is often where the biggest structural changes happen.
Security and Fragmentation Will Define 2026
As stablecoins become more deeply embedded into financial flows, we also need to pay attention to the broader ecosystem in which they exist. In 2026, I see two trends of key importance that will stand out and put pressure on how this sector continues to grow and change.
The first is security. This really should not be surprising, but I still feel like it often remains underappreciated. Hackers never stand still: they continuously improve their toolkits and are increasingly using AI in more complex attacks. This is already visible today, and the situation will only intensify as we go on.
In 2026, many protocols will be tested aggressively, and some will inevitably fail to hold out. However, I do believe that teams that invest in rigorous development and proper testing will have much better odds of enduring the pressure.
The second trend is consolidation. As major networks like Ethereum and Solana continue to scale, we can now see that a lot of DeFi activity is circling back to a smaller number of strong ecosystems. Liquidity and developers are becoming more selective, which makes 2026 a difficult year to launch new chains without a clear value that would differentiate them from everyone else.
That said, I don’t think that this change should be viewed negatively or seen as a sign of weakening. If anything, this should be seen as the industry growing to its next stage of evolution and maturation. The infrastructure is solidifying around systems that have consistently proven they have what it takes to operate at scale without bending or breaking.
And that is precisely what stablecoins need now. As this asset class expands its role in global finance, security and reliable execution will be more important than ever.
What 2026 Will Ultimately Bring
Despite some of the hype, I do not expect stablecoins to be replacing banks in the long run, and they don’t need to, either. They have a more fundamental role to play: changing how money moves through faster settlement, programmability, and global availability by default.
By the end of 2026, I expect that the world at large will come to view stablecoins as an assumed layer of financial infrastructure, with the main topic of interest being how to build on top of them.
That shift is already underway, and I am very interested to see where it goes from here.
About the author
Michael Egorov is a physicist, entrepreneur, and crypto maximalist who stood at the origins of DeFi creation. He’s a founder of the decentralized protocols Curve Finance and Yield Basis. Michael Egorov transitioned to the crypto industry from the scientific field. In 2003, Mr. Egorov won a bronze medal at the International Physics Olympiad (IPhO). Later, he earned a PhD in the field of ultracold atoms in Australia. His background in physics, cryptography, and software engineering underpins his approach to building resilient DeFi infrastructure.
