DeFi has historically required liquidity providers (LPs) to deposit assets into smart contracts to participate in liquidity provision and trading. This model enabled composability and atomic execution, but it also concentrated risk and led to structurally inefficient capital usage. A new class of DeFi primitives is now emerging that flips this model: liquidity remains in user wallets and is permissioned for execution only when needed. Rather than owning liquidity, protocols orchestrate access to it. This piece explores wallet-permissioned liquidity as an emerging DeFi design pattern, using 1inch Aqua and Barter Superposition as concrete case studies, and examines its implications for capital efficiency, risk, and adoption – including by more risk-aware and institutional capital.

Last year, we shared our predictions about what could shape the year ahead. This time, we’re taking a different route. Rather than claiming to know what the future holds, we want to share what we hope to see: a 10-point wishlist of ideas, problems, and products we’d love founders to take on in 2026. By anchoring these reflections, we gain a nuanced understanding of where the next set of meaningful opportunities may emerge across Infrastructure, DeFi, and Consumer – and in how evolving regulation will shape the ground beneath them.

We’re excited to announce that Greenfield is leading Semantic Layer’s $1.5M Series A funding round, which brings the total funding to $5M. Semantic Layer is building the execution and sequencing infrastructure for the Agent Economy. As autonomous AI agents begin to transact, trade, and collaborate on-chain, Semantic Layer gives dApps and agents sovereignty over how these interactions are executed, empowering them to define transaction sequencing, capture MEV fairly, and design entirely new economic primitives.

We’re excited to announce that Greenfield is participating in nuConstruct’s $6M seed funding round. nuConstruct is developing TOOL, an out-of-protocol solution to scale Ethereum L1 block times from currently 12 seconds to 1 second subslots via early confirmations, which guarantee both inclusion and execution results of transactions.