Eli Ben-Sasson, co-founder of StarkNet (STRK) and CEO of StarkWare, shared his predictions for the cryptocurrency ecosystem in 2026.
Ben-Sasson’s analyses focus on topics such as the rise of privacy technologies, competition among smart contract platforms, and the resurgence of the on-chain gaming ecosystem.
According to Ben-Sasson, the concept of privacy will become more prominent in the crypto world by 2026. The StarkWare CEO stated that he expects increased interest in privacy within the community and expressed cautious optimism that some trusted execution environments (TZEs) and technological updates in this area could be implemented during the year.
Ben-Sasson argued that competition will continue in the smart contract and DeFi spheres, stating that the battle between Ethereum and Solana will not produce a clear winner until the end of 2026. He predicted that both networks will remain strong and play decisive roles in the ecosystem.
Ben-Sasson, drawing attention to blockchain gaming as a more surprising topic, argued that the gaming sector will make a strong comeback in the new year with on-chain solutions. He believes this comeback will particularly occur on Starknet, explaining that this is due to the ease with which features needed by gaming applications can be delivered thanks to native computational abstraction (NAA), and Starknet’s high scalability capacity.
*This is not investment advice.
