Messari recently released a 2026 trend research report with an interesting observation: although AI is currently experiencing explosive popularity, the real bottleneck is quite obvious—lack of real-world data support.

This point deserves attention. Currently, most AI models are trained on historical data and online texts. When dealing with real-time, dynamic, multi-dimensional scenarios, their performance often falls short. For the cryptocurrency market, from on-chain data and trading behaviors to macroeconomic indicators, the acquisition and application of authentic data directly determine the accuracy of AI prediction models.

In other words, the true breakthrough for AI in the crypto space may not lie in the algorithms themselves, but in the ability to build a more complete and transparent data layer. Whoever gains access to and analysis capabilities of Web3 native data will have a first-mover advantage in the next AI wave. This also explains why more and more crypto projects are beginning to focus on building on-chain data infrastructure.