Analytics Firm Messari Releases Its 2026 Cryptocurrency Forecasts
Cryptocurrency analytics company Messari shared its predictions for the sector in 2026 in its new report.
The report argues that 2025 will be an extremely polarizing year for the crypto industry, with the market offering completely different experiences for different actors.
According to Messari, 2025 will be one of the strongest years in crypto history for Wall Street-based institutional investors, while it will stand out as a challenging period that falls short of expectations for individual investors and community-focused participants.
The report states that Bitcoin has clearly diverged from all other crypto assets and solidified its position as the leading cryptocurrency. The relatively weak performance seen in the second half of 2025 was largely attributed to selling pressure from older, high-cap wallets. Messari predicts that this does not constitute a permanent or structural problem, and that Bitcoin’s monetary narrative will remain intact in the long term.
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The report noted that the valuations of many Layer-1 (L1) networks are increasingly decoupled from fundamental indicators. Pointing to significant year-on-year declines in L1 revenues, Messari stated that current valuations are increasingly based on expectations of a “monetary premium.” With a few exceptions, L1 projects are expected to underperform Bitcoin in the coming period.
Ethereum remains one of the most debated assets in the sector. While questions about its value accumulation haven’t completely disappeared, it’s argued that the market will begin pricing ETH as a “cryptocurrency” similar to Bitcoin in the second half of 2025. Messari predicts that if a new bull market emerges in 2026, Ethereum-focused digital treasures (DATs) could experience a “second life.”
According to Messari, Zcash (ZEC) is no longer just a niche privacy coin; it’s now being priced as a private cryptocurrency. In the context of increasing surveillance, corporate control, and financial pressure, ZEC is positioned as a complementary hedge against Bitcoin.
*This is not investment advice.
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NEAR Is Now Live on Solana as “Attention Is All You Need” Post Goes Viral
The NEAR token is now available for trading on Solana, powered by NEAR Intents and Orb Markets. This integration comes one day after Solana’s “Attention is All You Need” post that went viral, featuring Jensen Huang and Illia Polosukhin.
On December 18, Solana’s official account on X announced NEAR going live on its network. NEAR Protocol’s official account quoted the announcement, mentioning this integration is powered by NEAR Intents and Orb Markets. NEAR Intents is a cross-chain protocol that achieved significant volume and revenue growth in 2025, while Orb Markets is an innovative Solana explorer built by Helius Labs.
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$NEAR, now on @Solana.
Powered by NEAR Intents × @Orb_Markets https://t.co/PFI5x6trGB pic.twitter.com/7REE0gd6sx
— NEAR Protocol (@NEARProtocol) December 18, 2025
Mert, founder and CEO of Helius Labs, celebrated the integration, mentioning he tried to buy NEAR “two days ago” after a post where he praised NEAR’s development team, but it was not available on Solana at that time. “A million markets in your pockets,” he described Solana, followed by a new post showing his Solana wallet with ZEC, NEAR, SOL, and McDonald’s xStock, saying, “crazy you can hold all this on a single Solana private key.”
NEAR on Solana can be visualized on Orbs via the wrapped token address 3ZLekZYq2qkZiSpnSvabjit34tUkjSwD1JFuW9as9wBG, currently trading at $1.52, according to Orbs.
NEAR token address visualization, as of December 18, 2025 | Source: Orbs Market
Solana and NEAR Collaboration: Attention Is All You Need
Everything started gaining traction on December 16, when Mert posted that “NEAR is a top 2-3 underrated team in crypto,” comparing its technical talent to Solana, in particular tracing a parallel between Illia Polosukhin, NEAR co-founder, and Anatoly Yakovenko, Solana co-founder.
NEAR seems to me a top 2-3 underrated team in crypto
it's the only technical team as talented as Solana with the results to show for it, v smart devs
it is also still founder-led with Illia (the guy who helped invent LLMs)
if their GTM gets fixed, no reason why it's not top 10
— mert | helius.dev (@0xMert_) December 16, 2025
Other prominent figures connected to Solana joined Mert. For example, Double Zero’s co-founder and former Strategy lead at Solana, Austin Federa, praised both NEAR Intents and NEAR’s AI products, also bringing Illia’s name to the table.
Near has consistently reinvented their product in source of PMF with a discipline not often found in crypto.
Intents are cool. It’s made possible by an awesome mpc network under the hood.
Their AI work is the only AI x Crypto thing I’m looking forwards to. Nice job… https://t.co/MMZ6RCneJV
— Austin Federa | 🇺🇸 (@Austin_Federa) December 16, 2025
On December 17, Alex Svanevik, CEO of NansenAI, said he “just bought some NEAR,” adding that he “can’t take missing out on another ZEC,” in reference to Mert’s role in pushing Zcash’s privacy and ZEC price through continuous support and active posting on X, as Coinspeaker reported before its remarkable rally.
just bought some near
I can’t take missing out on another zec https://t.co/48ixDFJVq7
— Alex Svanevik 🐧 (@ASvanevik) December 17, 2025
Then, Solana’s official account posted a photo of Jensen Huang, Nvidia’s CEO, touching Illia’s arm in a conference panel, with the caption “Attention is All You Need.” Illia is the co-author of Attention is All You Need, the revolutionary 2017 Google paper that introduced the transformer architecture, the core tech behind the AI boom—called the “T” in “ChatGPT.”
This post got a response from Polosukhin, sharing an old picture of him listening to Yakovenko’s explanation in front of a whiteboard, suggesting the two founders and projects have maintained a good relationship for years.
You have my attention pic.twitter.com/ugysFyynAi
— Illia (root.near) (🇺🇦, ⋈) (@ilblackdragon) December 17, 2025
As things develop, Solana and NEAR break a paradigm of hostile competition in crypto, opening the doors for an era of collaboration in endeavors that are mutually beneficial, with the notion of the chains and infrastructures abstracted to the end user, who can access both assets and ecosystems natively in their wallets of choice.
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Vini Barbosa has covered the crypto industry professionally since 2020, summing up to over 10,000 hours of research, writing, and editing related content for media outlets and key industry players. Vini is an active commentator and a heavy user of the technology, truly believing in its revolutionary potential. Topics of interest include blockchain, open-source software, decentralized finance, and real-world utility.
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$ZEC has rebounded nicely from the 371 support, but price is now trading directly into a strong resistance zone between 400–411. On the daily timeframe, ZEC is still below major resistance and moving inside a broader corrective structure rather than a confirmed uptrend.
The recent upside move shows slowing momentum, with price struggling to push above the 411 high, which has already acted as a clear rejection zone. This tells us sellers are still active overhead. On the 1H chart, price is holding up, but candles are compressing near resistance — a typical sign of exhaustion rather than continuation.
Volume does not support a clean breakout yet, and without strong follow-through, this move looks more like a relief rally after a deep drop from higher levels. As long as ZEC stays below 418, risk favors a pullback toward lower support zones.
Key Levels to Watch:
Support Zones: 392, 380, 371
Resistance Zones: 400 – 410, major at 418
Bias remains short near resistance. If you’re not following Token Talk, you’re missing structured trades with clear logic and risk control.