On 23 December, at the start of the Christmas holidays, exchange-traded funds based on the two largest cryptocurrencies by market capitalisation recorded combined outflows of $284.1m.

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Over the past six months, I've gone from being an observer of Web3 to entering the payment industry. Now, I've chosen to stop and cease working on Web3 payments.

This isn't a retreat after a failure, but rather a judgment and adjustment made after truly getting involved. In these past six months, I've traveled to Yiwu, Shuibei, Putian, and even Mexico, seeing how payments are actually implemented in the most prominent places mentioned in reports. I've also been involved, building a Web3 payment MVP, taking over accounts, developing Web3 payment tools, and trying to run my imagined path from the first step to the last.

But the further I went…

An entrepreneur's account: From beginning to end, why I stopped developing Web3 payments.

What's Next for DeFi in 2026?

We've revealed the key trends to watch next year.

Last year, DL News attempted to predict three major DeFi trends for 2025.

We predicted that traditional finance would enter DeFi at an unprecedented pace, more protocols would launch their own blockchains, and fintech companies would massively integrate DeFi into their products.

Our predictions have proven quite accurate.

In 2025, we'll see banks issuing stablecoins, asset management firms allocating billions of dollars to DeFi lending protocols...

Top DeFi Trends to Watch in 2026

Introduction Market Overview In 2025, stablecoins and DAT expanded in both scale and application scenarios, beginning to directly connect with traditional finance at the boundary level. The total market capitalization of stablecoins once exceeded $230 billion, with an annual on-chain settlement scale of approximately $1.5 trillion. Supported by legislation such as the GENIUS Act, they gradually solidified as the underlying settlement layer for cross-border payments and on-chain finance. The DAT model, through compliant equity or fund vehicles, provided traditional institutional investors with a standardized path to access crypto asset exposure, with its holdings of BTC and ETH assets having a high market value...