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Some of crypto’s biggest winners aren’t born onchain. They start in private markets, quietly accumulating capital, traction, and regulatory leverage long before tokens or tickers appear.
While most investors can’t access these rounds directly, paying attention to who is raising and what trends they represent offers a powerful edge. Venture funding often surfaces the builders and businesses that will define crypto’s next cycle, and this most recent raise class appears especially promising, with several candidates already resembling prime IPO plays.
Here are five venture-stage crypto companies with narrative momentum at their backs that are worth tracking in 2026. 👇
💸 YO Protocol
Website | Twitter
Last Raise: $10M
Valuation: Unknown
Round: Series A
Deployed on Base, Yield Optimizer (YO) Protocol is an onchain vault offering diversified yield indexes that generate income by deploying capital across multiple protocols and blockchains.
YO aggregates yields and handles portfolio rebalancing, allowing users to earn yield with ease on their ETH, BTC, USD, and EUR deposits, and users receive liquid yoTOKENS after depositing, which enjoy widespread integrations across preeminent 
Base DeFi applications, including Pendle, Euler, and Contango.
The Protocol announced it had raised $10M in a Series A fundraising round – which was led by Foundation Capital with participation from 
Coinbase Ventures, Scribble Ventures, and Launchpad Capital – in December of last year.
What’s the Trend?
Onchain yield funds, or vaults, are quickly becoming one of the hottest trends in crypto markets. They can enable anyone to access high-yielding crypto opportunities, without needing to manage position risk or rebalance their portfolio.
While these vault models are not without their risks (Stream Finance imploded in November and dragged numerous other tokenized yield funds into its insolvency wake), YO seeks to mitigate risks for its depositors by adjusting allocations based on risk using Exponential.fi ratings.
The YO governance token is notably launching on February 5 with an initial non-transferable phase.
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