Bankless
The Duopolies of 2026: Ethereum & Solana, Coinbase & Robinhood, Polymarket & Kalshi | Ryan, David & Arnav Pagidyala
19 Jan 2026
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
One, I'm very bullish on Solana from the perspective of pretty much every founder I meet and consumer, that is where they just default go to build, right?
Chapter 2: What is the Ethereum and Solana duopoly and why is it important?
And on the other side of the spectrum, I expect to see like a very strong reversal in Ethereum sentiment. I think we've already begun that with Genius Act, Clarity Act, improvement in REV and TVL, DAT bid, institutional bid. I think everything is just going to go Ethereum's way this year in particular.
Bankless Nation, I want to introduce you to Arnav Pagadiala. He is an investment partner with us at Bankless Ventures. Also one of the sharpest minds I found in crypto when it comes to meaningful, intelligent investing.
Chapter 3: How is Solana winning the blockchain battle?
We recently had him on the show not too long ago to talk about Bankless Ventures' investment focus for 2026. That episode will be linked in the show notes if you're curious. And in this episode, we're going to talk about everything else. The Ethereum Solana duopoly, Coinbase versus Robinhood, Polymarket versus Kalshi. Investing in ICOs and whether or not tokens will suck in 2026.
Does Hyperliquid further entrench itself or does it get a competitor?
Chapter 4: What are the implications of the Coinbase vs. Robinhood rivalry?
Big questions and topics that guide liquid market investing in crypto. Arnav, welcome back to Bankless.
David, Brian, thank you for having me.
I'm excited for this conversation. There's just a smorgasbord, a charcuterie board of relevant topics that I think really guide investment decision making, as I kind of just alluded to, for this year. And we're starting this year off fresh. I think everyone has maybe some chips that they would like to place on the table.
Chapter 5: How do Kalshi and Polymarket compete in prediction markets?
I am not fully deployed. I don't think Brian is fully deployed. And I think there's a lot of people like that who are just confused about how to invest in 2026. So I want to go through some of the big topics. that I just mentioned. Let's start with Ethereum and Solana duopoly. This is something that you wrote something in the Bankless newsletter about.
The duopoly of Ethereum and Solana will become clear in 2026. Ethereum is the slow risk DeFi chain for real world assets, money markets. Solana is the home of consumer crypto and moving towards the decentralized Nasdaq vision with FireDancer and Alpenglow. I think what you're kind of alluding to, Arnav, is that This is kind of it.
Chapter 6: What makes tokens investable in 2026?
These are the chains. It's Ethereum and Solana.
Chapter 7: How does Morpho's integration impact the DeFi landscape?
They are pointing in different directions. They are targeting different markets. And this duopoly is going to entrench itself and make it very hard for a new smart contract chain to come into the market. Explain a little bit about what your reasoning is and color in this idea that you have. Absolutely.
So I definitely don't want to give the idea that I absolutely do not believe alt L1s or L2s could have their day. They absolutely can. And definitely application specific chains can.
But if we're talking just about general purpose chains, I think in 2025, it's become abundantly clear that it's incredibly difficult for an incumbent to disrupt the network effects already achieved by Ethereum and Solana. And especially these general purpose all L1s and L2s, I believe they're going to continue to struggle to attract new liquidity, new users without blasting incentives, right?
Chapter 8: What role does proof-of-personhood play in crypto's future?
We've seen a number of alt L1s throughout the last year run these really aggressive deposit campaigns. You get nine figures in deposits. They pay out a significant amount of incentives and the capital immediately leaves. And maybe one of the more recent examples of this is Unichain. You know, back in July, they were at roughly $1 billion in TVL with the incentives.
Fast forward to today, they're at circa $100 million in TVL. And it's just this very common playbook that's been run. And the reason why is like all the capital ends up going back to Ethereum or Solana. And I think beyond that, if you were to ask me a year, two years ago, uh, will PumpFun or Polymarket launch their own chain? I would have bet strongly yes.
Both controlled, you know, the front end. They owned all the users, the eyeballs, and they didn't, right? And that really begs the question, why didn't they? And if they didn't, who should, right? So even for these application-specific chains, it's come into question that
These companies actually really, A, not only value the network effects of their underlying network, but B, they can't really justify launching a chain because before the reason to launch a chain was you could really establish this large L1 premium. And by and large, again, outside of the really big winners, that doesn't exist today.
And again, you're abandoning the network effects of the underlying chain and you're introducing a lot of friction. The last two things I'd probably say here is, One, I'm very bullish on Solana from the perspective of pretty much every founder I meet in consumer, that is where they just default go to build, right?
And two things they've nailed is A, again, everything consumer is happening there right now and B, they're nailing a lot of the microstructure required to build low latency on chain order books and become the home for a lot of spot trading. And on the other side of the spectrum, I expect to see like a very strong reversal in Ethereum sentiment.
I think we've already begun that with Genius Act, Clarity Act, improvement in REV and TVL, DAT bid, institutional bid. I think everything is just going to go Ethereum's way this year in particular. So At a high level, that's kind of why I believe like Ethereum and Solana's duopoly, for lack of better words, could strengthen.
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