To the founders: Electric Capital has released 26 "bounties" to find the next user sovereignty unicorn

Author: Avichal Garg, Curtis Spencer, Ken Deeter, Maria Shen, Ren

Compilation: Deep Tide TechFlow

Introduction: The 2026 investment blueprint released by Electric Capital marks a turning point where “user sovereignty” moves from concept to large-scale implementation.

The authors point out that, against the backdrop of a global collapse of institutional trust and AI power centralization, cryptography is not just a financial tool but a core infrastructure for defending personal sovereignty. From private AI agents that can run on local desktops to stablecoins enabling 4 billion people to access dollar yields, the article outlines 6 major fields with 26 specific investment opportunities.

The full text is as follows:

The conditions for user-owned technology have matured.

A collapse of trust in institutions is happening worldwide. People have lost confidence in institutions that once formed the core of economic, political, and social life, including governments, banks, media, and schools. This is not a short-term trend nor a response to a single event, but a long-term shift in expectations. People no longer assume institutions are neutral, reliable, or aligned with their interests.

Distributed systems and cryptography provide developers with new trustless tools. These technologies are designed to operate in adversarial environments: they assume participants may be malicious, software must be verifiable, and systems should function correctly even if opponents fail.

AI makes this shift toward “minimized trust systems” more urgent and possible than ever before. AI not only centralizes power but also reduces development costs. Now, an individual can complete in hours what previously took a team months to build. This puts pressure on middlemen, opens new possibilities for developers, and increases demand for “user-controlled” infrastructure.

User-owned systems defend freedom. These systems minimize trust by returning control to users. They cannot be unilaterally altered. They enable people to build without permission. If done well, they allow users to exit systems that no longer serve them without losing functionality.

Electric Capital invests $1 million to $20 million in user-owned technology, empowering people with control, privacy, and access.

Since 2018, we have been investing in systems that reduce reliance on intermediaries. We started with programmable money. Today, the same principles and technologies are applied across software, data, markets, and more.

If you are building in these areas, we want to invest in your ideas. For a deeper background on our arguments, read our 2018 article on reshaping trust intermediaries and programmable money.

This article outlines 26 opportunities across key fields in 2026.

These opportunities cover user-owned systems, globally accessible markets, entertainment built on new financial primitives, and infrastructure for a world where software is built for AI. But they all share a common theme: exploring how power, access, and ownership should operate in an AI-ubiquitous and deeply embedded world.

These opportunities are distributed across six core areas:

Personal Software: AI enables the creation of personalized tools tailored to individual lives, not just SaaS built for the average user. Private agents, encrypted collaboration, and locally running software are now not only feasible but increasingly essential.

Agent-Focused Infrastructure: As AI agents become the primary developers of software, existing stacks will become obsolete. New primitives are needed for testing, deployment, payments, data access, and collaboration among agents.

Fintech & DeFi: Stablecoins enable over 4 billion people to access dollars. Now, they need yields, equity exposure, insurance, and more. The demand for global, programmable, accessible financial infrastructure is accelerating.

Finance as Entertainment: The younger generation views markets as entertainment. Trading is fast, social, and fun. This transforms financial products and opens new markets.

Metaverse Revival: World models and generative AI drastically reduce the cost of building immersive, personalized environments. People will step into experiences built around themselves, rather than passively consuming content. Opportunities exist in creating simplified world-building platforms that let users control data sharing, storage, and monetization within these worlds.

New Crypto Primitives & Applications: Proof of Stake (PoS) and Proof of Work (PoW) are maturing and leaving room for new consensus models. Zero-knowledge (ZK) systems and Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE) are becoming practical. These primitives unlock new design spaces: consensus tied to human or physical inputs, infrastructure with default privacy, and applications for regulated entities, energy markets, and new jurisdictions.

If you are building in any of these areas, contact us at info@electriccapital.com.

Personal Software

Individuals can now build software tailored precisely to their needs, no longer limited to products provided by companies. With AI agents capable of handling complex workflows—reading emails, scheduling meetings, managing files—new demands for data privacy, ownership, and persistence arise. Cryptography-supported systems can make these tools private, persistent, and collaborative.

Specific ideas we want to invest in:

Private AI agents: People need to run AI on sensitive data securely.

Possible form: An AI assistant that automates personal workflows while protecting your privacy. Connect your health and financial records and get AI insights. Models run in Trusted Execution Environments (TEE) or compute networks, with inbound queries anonymized. Responses are returned without enterprise providers or malicious actors seeing your data.

Encrypted collaboration spaces: People need private collaboration with others (including humans and agents). Remember, “the cloud” is just someone else’s computer.

Possible form: Shared workspaces for friends, family, or small businesses. Financial data, documents, and tasks synchronize via P2P storage solutions. Selective disclosure allows agents to access specific data types. No accounts are needed, and no company can read, store, or train on sensitive data. Offline work is supported.

Desktop agents: People need automation on their local computers.

Possible form: An agent running on your desktop that reads your emails, drafts replies, creates agendas, and manages your life. This idea could evolve into a new kind of desktop OS in an AI-first world.

Private payment services: People need ways to pay for software services without identity verification.

Possible form: Purchase VPNs, games, cloud storage, or AI compute without accounts. Pay based on usage, measured by the service, settled in stablecoins via protocols like x402. Providers know someone paid and how much, but not the payer’s identity.

Agent-Focused Infrastructure

Agents will write most of our code and perform most of our knowledge work. Key insights are: (1) software tools need to be fundamentally restructured because AI-generated code introduces new failure modes. (2) Development will shift inward as custom software becomes economically viable. (3) Agents need new pathways for peer-to-peer transactions. (4) Business previously limited by human labor can suddenly scale. These ideas capture the opportunities created by these second-order effects.

Specific ideas we want to invest in:

AI-native compute infrastructure: Companies need infrastructure to test, isolate, and roll back AI-generated changes.

Possible form: An AWS or GCP reimagined for agents. Agents write code in sandbox environments, test against production data securely, and deploy with automatic rollback if issues occur. Entire process assumes code is from agents, not humans.

End-to-end product development tools: Non-technical staff need to go from idea to usable software seamlessly.

Possible form: A platform where users specify business goals, data sources, and desired outcomes. The system generates plans, designs, code, and deployable products. It eliminates the need for technical translation, enabling non-technical users to go from “idea” to “deployed product” in hours instead of months.

Agent-enabled commerce: Agents need to buy and sell autonomously without human identities or bank accounts.

Possible form: An API marketplace where agents purchase services from other agents. Discovery, negotiation, and pay-per-call use protocols like x402, settled instantly in stablecoins.

Data networks & marketplaces: AI needs infrastructure to compensate contributors and control data usage rights.

Possible form: A network where users share medical records, consumption patterns, investment behaviors, or creative works for AI training. Contributors set permissions and are rewarded as their data improves models. AI companies access necessary financial data with clear provenance.

Scaling professional services: Service businesses need AI-native operations to scale beyond human limits.

Possible form: A law firm where each lawyer has an AI assistant for research, drafting, and review. A firm that served 1,000 clients now can serve 100,000. Any client-facing industry—law, architecture, marketing, accounting, finance—can be restructured around AI.

Fintech & DeFi

Over 4 billion people and millions of businesses facing currency risks are actively seeking dollar access via stablecoins, representing the largest expansion of the dollar network in decades. As stablecoins provide dollar access globally—growing from $3 billion in 2019 to over $300 billion today—millions of new dollar holders need more than digital cash. They need yields, investment opportunities, and financial services. There are growing opportunities in financial products that give users ownership and global access.

Specific ideas we want to invest in:

Non-crypto correlated yield: Stablecoin holders need yields that don’t decline with Bitcoin (BTC) price drops.

Possible form: A platform that brings real-world infrastructure yields to stablecoin holders. Yields may come from bonds of data center projects, solar installations, and EV charging networks with predictable cash flows, uncorrelated with crypto markets.

Globally accessible equities: Investors worldwide need low-friction, low-cost access to foreign opportunities.

Possible form: A financial product replicating equity ownership with price exposure, no funding rate, and perpetual duration. Traders in the Philippines can build a US tech stock portfolio; Canadians can build exposure to Korean semiconductors.

New forms of insurance: Businesses need quick, transparent coverage for operational risks that traditional insurance cannot provide.

Possible form: A platform creating new insurance products via prediction markets. Hotel chains can buy hurricane coverage for Florida properties; ski resorts can hedge against warm winters. Capital providers supply liquidity in exchange for non-correlated returns.

On-chain commodities markets: Commodities require markets with 24/7 trading, instant settlement, and global access.

Possible form: A market for trading energy storage capacity. Battery storage is a promising entry point, as data centers need reliable power and are investing in storage to reduce grid dependence and integrate renewables. Data centers with surplus storage can sell capacity during peak demand. Grid operators can trade capacity based on seasonal needs.

Protected DeFi assets: Institutions need to deploy assets into DeFi that remains secure even if hacked.

Possible form: A wrapped version of ETH that can be revoked if the protocol is exploited (e.g., GuardedETH). A trusted committee reviews exploits and can revoke transactions without moving the underlying ETH. Legitimate transactions proceed normally.

Finance as Entertainment

Younger generations see financial markets as an alternative to traditional paths, emphasizing talent over credentials. When they participate, they reimagine markets as entertainment. They trade like playing games: in accessible markets with quick feedback and high adrenaline. Products like zero-days-to-expiration options (0DTE), which settle in hours, now account for over 55% of S&P 500 options volume. Prediction markets, where anyone can bet on headlines, reached $44 billion in 2025, five times the previous year. They turn their trading into content: live discussions on Discord, sharing gains/losses on TikTok, portfolio reviews on Twitch. When markets become entertainment, platforms that treat financial data as engaging, participatory content are full of opportunity.

We want to invest in:

Spectator capital: Live viewers need ways to participate economically in outcomes.

Possible form: A platform allowing viewers to stake on live content. Engagement makes watching more fun, but currently, viewers only tip or subscribe. This platform lets reality show audiences bet on who gets eliminated or copy trades when hosts share their strategies.

Opinion markets: Prediction markets need markets that settle based on collective beliefs rather than just events.

Possible form: A platform generating ranked lists. Users stake on how they think others will rank items. The platform can create lists like “Best Pizza in New York,” “Top Wines Under $20,” “Most Influential Movies of the Last Decade,” or “Best AI Development Tools,” all ranked by market consensus. Rankings are settled weekly based on staking weights.

Drama launchpads: Since individual storytellers can produce series more cheaply than studios, they need funding and distribution.

Possible form: A UGC platform for short dramas. Creators use AI video tools to produce series: “Legend of the Mob Boy,” “Secrets of Billionaires,” “Revenge Thrillers.” Fans unlock episodes with tokens and tip creators directly. Creators earn based on views. ReelShort generated over $700 million in Q1 2025 from low-budget studio productions. The platform combines YouTube-style UGC with ReelShort’s video format.

Metaverse Revival

Building immersive digital worlds is now economically feasible. Over the past two years, AI models for images, videos, and simulations have advanced rapidly, drastically lowering asset and environment creation costs. Individual creators can now build content that previously required entire game studios. Meanwhile, demand for personalized, interactive content accelerates: Dispatch, a “choose-your-own-adventure” TV/game hybrid, sold 3.3 million copies in 3 months, earning $85 million with 98% positive reviews. Roblox’s daily active users (DAU) grew 70% year-over-year, paying out $428 million to creators in Q3 2025 alone. Personalized AI-driven chat applications like Character AI also show strong early demand for individualized entertainment. These new environments will not only entertain users but also generate rich, structured interaction data for world models and robotics.

We want to invest in:

World compiler: Non-expert creators need tools to turn natural language into fully interactive 3D worlds.

Possible form: A platform converting natural language descriptions into interactive 3D environments. Building 3D worlds still requires modeling, physics, and NPC logic expertise, but AI can remove these barriers. Creators describe a world, and the system constructs it automatically. Assets, physics, NPC logic, and memory are handled by the system. Creators can deliver rich virtual environments in days, not years.

Procedural narrative engine: Players need stories that adapt to them and never end.

Possible form: A platform generating real-time, personalized stories. Linear stories have endings, but players want experiences that adapt and continue. Users enter detective universes where each case is unique. Characters remember past interactions, plot twists respond to choices, and stories never run out.

World-as-dataset platform: World models and robotics need diverse interaction data. Consumer immersive environments generate this data but are not captured currently.

Possible form: A VR game where every interaction is instrumented. How users move through rooms, pick up objects, and interact with characters becomes training data for robots. Users can opt-in, set permissions, and get compensated. AI companies gain access to real human behavior data they cannot synthesize.

New Crypto Primitives & Applications

Crypto primitives are no longer just theoretical. PoS and PoW have proven resilient at scale. Zero-knowledge (ZK) proofs are moving from research to production. Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE) is becoming faster and easier to use. As these foundational technologies mature, they create new opportunities for developers to build systems prioritizing privacy, embedding real-world inputs into consensus, and supporting traditional systems like energy markets or governments.

We want to invest in:

Human time as consensus: Blockchain networks need consensus mechanisms anchored in human effort, not just capital.

Possible form: “Proof of Useful Work,” where consensus requires completing externally valuable tasks like data labeling or verifying real-world events. Participation rights derive from demonstrated ability, not just staking.

Physical resource networks: Small infrastructure operators need collaborative systems to make their contributions economically viable.

Possible form: Energy networks where production or storage capacity determines consensus weight, aligning grid stability with network security. Sensor networks based on physical measurements like weather, water quality, or infrastructure monitoring.

Native privacy L1s: Healthcare, enterprise, regulated finance, and many other sectors need blockchains with default privacy.

Possible form: Confidential State Machines that compute on encrypted data by default. Current blockchains are transparent, but many entities (medical, corporate, regulated finance) legally cannot operate on transparent chains. Validators verify without seeing transaction contents, using ZK-native architectures or FHE-based execution environments.

Use-case specific FHE: Institutions often need to collaborate on data without revealing it.

Possible form: Banks detecting suspicious patterns across institutions without sharing customer data. Each bank runs FHE queries on encrypted data from others. They can identify accounts that interacted with the same suspicious entity without revealing customer lists.

Energy contract settlement: Traditional markets need encrypted layers for 24/7 settlement among participants. Deregulated energy markets are a good entry point, as increasing AI-driven energy demand makes these markets outdated and under pressure.

Possible form: Shared settlement layer for energy contracts in deregulated markets. Delivery data triggers automatic payments; suppliers see cash flows in real time; brokers get instant commissions. No single centralized party controls the ledger.

Crypto-native jurisdictions: Special economic zones and frontier jurisdictions need new governance and financial infrastructure approaches.

Possible form: A new jurisdiction built from day one on crypto rails, with on-chain identities, programmable courts, tokenized capital markets, and smart contract-based regulation.