TL;DR：Alliance 的早期申请逆势而上：2026 年 6 月 17 日，Alliance 联合创始人伊姆兰·汗 (Imran Khan) 表示，该群体的申请量比上一季度翻了一番，标志着自 Alliance 成立以来最强劲的申请周期。创始人正在积极进入新的稳定币场景、人工智能、代理支付和机器人等领域。加密货币寒冬是务实创业的窗口：随着基础设施的成熟、开发成本的下降、人才供应的增加以及监管环境的清晰，越来越多的开发者开始在既定的轨道上构建现实世界的应用程序，而不是纯粹依赖叙事驱动的增长。创业重点转向应用层：基于该联盟队列的趋势，稳定币、人工智能、预测市场衍生品、代理支付和机器人技术已成为热门领域。行业关注点正逐渐从基础设施开发扩展到现实世界的用例。顶级机构的关注点一致：伊姆兰·汗强调“轨道优先”战略，而王桥则继续关注 Zcash 等长期科技投资。同时，a16z c
rypto 和 Paradigm 正在稳定币、人工智能代理和机器人技术的交叉领域积极部署资本。虽然许多人讨论加密市场重新进入冬季阶段，但美国著名加密初创加速器 Alliance 却提供了一组对比鲜明的数据。 2026 年 6 月 17 日，Alliance 联合创始人 Imran Khan 在 X 上发帖称，最新的早期应用周期刚刚结束，申请总数比上一季度翻了一番，这是 Alliance 6.5 年历史上前所未有的激增。他指出，最令人兴奋的方面是创始人将它们拉入全新的类别，包括全新领域的稳定币应用、人工智能、代理支付和机器人技术。他补充说，现在的目标是在明年将申请量增加两倍，并建立 Alli
TL;DR:
- Alliance’s early-stage applications defy the trend: On June 17, 2026, Alliance co-founder Imran Khan stated that application volume for this cohort doubled compared to the previous quarter, marking the strongest application cycle since Alliance’s inception. Founders are aggressively entering areas like novel stablecoin scenarios, AI, agentic payments, and robotics.
- The crypto winter serves as a window for pragmatic entrepreneurship: As infrastructure matures, development costs drop, talent supply increases, and the regulatory environment clears up, an increasing number of builders are constructing real-world applications on established rails rather than relying purely on narrative-driven growth.
- Entrepreneurial focus shifts toward the application layer: Based on the trends in this Alliance cohort, stablecoins, AI, prediction market derivatives, agentic payments, and robotics have emerged as hot sectors. The industry focus is gradually expanding from infrastructure development to real-world use cases.
- Top-tier institutions align in their focus: Imran Khan emphasized a “rails first” strategy, while Qiao Wang continues to monitor long-term tech bets like Zcash. Concurrently, a16z crypto and Paradigm are actively deploying capital across the intersections of stablecoins, AI agents, and robotics.
While many discuss the crypto market re-entering a winter phase, Alliance, a prominent US crypto startup accelerator, has delivered a contrasting set of data. On June 17, 2026, Alliance co-founder Imran Khan posted on X that the latest early-stage application cycle had just concluded, with total applications doubling compared to the previous quarter — a surge unprecedented in Alliance’s 6.5-year history.
He noted that the most exciting aspect is founders pulling them into entirely new categories, including stablecoin applications in net-new areas, AI, agentic payments, and robotics. He added that the goal now is to triple application volume over the next year and establish Alliance as the de facto hub for founders in New York. Amid a cautious market sentiment, these figures have refocused external attention on exactly which directions early-stage US crypto founders are betting on.
Why Alliance Deserves Attention
Co-founded by Imran Khan and Qiao Wang, Alliance focuses on the cutting-edge intersection of finance, crypto, and AI. Imran Khan noted in a post on June 12 that the Alliance community and ecosystem network encompasses professionals from leading institutions such as Founders Fund, Jump, and Jane Street. Selecting 20 to 30 teams per cohort, its alumni network includes notable projects like Rain, Pendle, and deBridge. Imran Khan believes that rather than merely watching Alliance, observers should use it as a lens to understand where early-stage US crypto founders are currently allocating their time and energy.
On June 16, Khan posted to congratulate alumni project Guardrail on its acquisition by Rain. He stated that Guardrail is one of the leading startups in the crypto security space, and this acquisition will further strengthen Rain’s capabilities in crypto payments, card operations, and financial infrastructure. On June 15, he also highlighted another alumni project, Freeport Markets, noting that it achieved 50% month-over-month growth, with trading volume expanding significantly within a three-month span.
Why Are More Founders Emerging During a Market Winter?
Based on Alliance’s latest application cycle, a compelling question arises: Why, amidst widespread talk of a market winter, are more founders choosing to launch projects now?
In past crypto cycles, startup activity was typically highly correlated with market conditions — bull markets attracted a massive influx of teams and capital, while bear markets saw a corresponding drop in project numbers. However, Imran Khan views the current phase differently. He believes that over the past decade, the crypto industry experienced a massive capital influx and a certain degree of overbuilding, and has now entered a natural adjustment period. Rather than continuing to chase new narratives, an increasing number of builders are beginning to seek new application scenarios around infrastructure that has already been validated.
The directions of this Alliance application round reveal projects that differ notably from those of the previous cycle. Stablecoins are no longer just a medium of exchange; they are entering a wider variety of scenarios, including payments, enterprise services, and novel financial products. AI is serving more as an extension of crypto product capabilities rather than as standalone applications. Areas like prediction markets, on-chain financial infrastructure, and robotics are also being built on top of existing networks and liquidity bases, rather than constructing new underlying protocols from scratch.
Concurrently, the US entrepreneurial environment has shifted. With ongoing progress regarding stablecoin regulation and market structure, several US crypto institutions have recently expressed expectations for gradually clearer regulation. Furthermore, large language models have lowered software development costs, enabling small teams to achieve product validation at a lower cost, which makes more founders willing to launch projects during market corrections. For early-stage teams, less competitive pressure and a more abundant talent supply mean they have more time to polish their products, rather than rapidly chasing funding and user growth at market peaks.
From this perspective, the contrarian growth in Alliance applications may not necessarily mean the market is re-entering a rapid expansion phase, but it demonstrates that the focus of early-stage US crypto founders is changing. Compared to the previous cycle’s heavy emphasis on token issuance and infrastructure building, this round of applications is more concentrated on application innovation atop mature infrastructure, as well as areas closely tied to real-world demands, such as AI and stablecoins.
What Alliance Founders Are Currently Watching
Imran Khan posted on June 7 outlining his long-term view on crypto. He believes he will always be bullish on crypto, but admits he previously overestimated the speed at which it would become the next major computing paradigm, with AI beating it to the punch in many aspects. The massive capital influx into the crypto industry over the past decade led to significant overbuilding, and it is now entering a natural period of pullback and consolidation.
He stated that crypto’s biggest success might not be launching a killer app first, but rather establishing the infrastructure (rails). As stablecoins, wallets, tokenized stocks, and on-chain financial infrastructure enabled by neobanks reach everyone and AI agents, crypto will ultimately become the internet’s default settlement layer. Once these rails are in place, early ideas like DAOs, decentralized markets, and machine-to-machine payments can truly achieve distribution. He mentioned recently using stablecoins as a tool to penetrate new markets, rapidly validating demand through cold DMs and in-person pitches, emphasizing that speaking directly with customers is crucial in early distribution.
On June 4, Khan posted a discussion on AI agents. He expressed caution regarding startups launching text-based AI agents as the primary application interface. Most people lack the time or patience to complete tasks through full conversational loops; they prefer images, buttons, or, in the future, voice interactions. Many successful AI agents will serve as extensions of existing products rather than standalone applications. A potentially effective format is a reactive messaging loop, where AI understands user preferences in the background and takes action, only contacting the user when necessary.
On June 11, Khan noted that the current Alliance cohort includes a team with members from an Anthropic background, building an entry point at the intersection of crypto, trading, and AI. He believes the opportunity space in this area is much larger than it appears on the surface.
Regarding prediction markets, Khan shared detailed views around June 12. He stated his bullishness on building products on top of Polymarket and Hyperliquid is due to their strong composability. These platforms will naturally capture low-hanging fruit, pushing new founders to explore peripheral areas. Hundreds of products could be built on top of these platforms, expanding their liquidity and network effects while serving completely different end users. Many opportunities are niche enough that core teams struggle to prioritize them, thereby creating space for startups with deep domain expertise.
He highlighted three prediction market projects in the current cohort that particularly excite him: the ETF project @ito_markets, the options project @convallax, and the lending project @ValkriLabs. These teams possess deep domain expertise, are building products they would use themselves, and all three products are live in beta, experiencing week-over-week growth, and bringing insights unseen in other markets. He believes that if prediction markets become a major asset class, a massive amount of value creation will occur in the products built on top of them, rather than at the exchange level. The advantages of an open ecosystem are clear: Hyperliquid and Polymarket will benefit from the expanding opportunity space, while new founders can iterate faster and ultimately outpace centralized competitors over the long term through composability.
Khan also mentioned that a completely new class of consumer financial products will emerge, solidifying neobanks’ position as an intermediary between traditional banks and on-chain finance. He cited current cohort project @olivetreeyield as an example, which brings differentiated yield to crypto via insurance-backed annuities.
What Qiao Wang Is Currently Watching
Alliance’s other co-founder, Qiao Wang, has recently been discussing Zcash consistently. He believes Zcash is starting to feel like the early stages of Bitcoin: it has the smartest people contributing to the project, faces bugs and existential threats, and experiences extreme price volatility, but offers highly asymmetric upside potential if successful. He stated that Zcash has a strong team and multiple tailwinds, including increased surveillance, wealth taxes, and quantum computing, making it one of the most compelling long-term bets since Ethereum in 2014. He even provided an aggressive long-term price expectation.
Beyond Zcash, Wang posted on June 7 about his new experiment. He stated he is launching rectoandverso, creating long-form articles in the same way one writes software: architecting an outline first, then spinning up agents to conduct research, write, and review, before iterating line by line and paragraph by paragraph. Currently, his main interest is frontier biology, with the first topic being Yamanaka factors.
What US VCs Are Focusing On Recently
a16z crypto Managing Partner Chris Dixon has posted multiple times recently supporting crypto regulatory progress. In relevant posts, he noted that the CLARITY Act passed the Senate Banking Committee with bipartisan support, calling it a historic moment for crypto founders and US consumers. He believes crypto is not a red or blue partisan issue, but a question of whether the next generation of financial and internet infrastructure will take root in the US. Dixon also stated that stablecoins are bringing the original vision of the internet into the financial sector, describing it as an important “WhatsApp moment.”
Paradigm founder Matt Huang recently posted his views on AI agent infrastructure. He stated that the multiplayer agent infrastructure used internally at Paradigm and Tempo is changing how organizations collaborate; not only is individual productivity increasing, but new organizational structures are also forming. Huang also participated in the funding round for SendCutSend, a project focused on 24-hour manufacturing serving robotics, defense, and aerospace, highlighting Paradigm’s deployment at the intersection of the real economy and frontier tech.
Paradigm Research Partner Dan Robinson recently posted a discussion on AI agents. He stated that AI is already approaching or reaching superhuman levels on well-defined problems but is prone to generating low-quality content in unconstrained research generation. He is bullish on areas with pre-registered hard problems and application areas constrained by reality.
Paradigm plans to raise a new fund of up to $1.5 billion, explicitly expanding into crypto, AI, robotics, and other frontier tech. The firm continues to push forward in the crypto space, launching initiatives like the 2026 Paradigm Fellowship to welcome builders in relevant fields.
How Have Startup Directions Changed Compared to the Last Bull Market?
Compared to the 2020–2022 bull market, the direction of early-stage US crypto startups has noticeably shifted. Hot sectors in the last cycle were primarily concentrated on NFTs, GameFi, various Layer 1 public chains, DeFi protocol forks, and numerous token issuance projects. During that period, many founding teams focused on rapidly issuing assets, attracting liquidity, and driving growth through narratives.
However, current Alliance applications show that founders’ focus has clearly pivoted to more pragmatic areas. Imran Khan has repeatedly mentioned the expansion of stablecoins into net-new scenarios, the intersection of AI and crypto, agentic payments, robotics, and composable products built on prediction markets. Qiao Wang continues to focus on long-term technological bets related to privacy and quantum computing. Recent perspectives from institutions like a16z and Paradigm also point to stablecoins as a settlement layer, physical AI deployment, the integration of robotics with the real economy, and the construction of on-chain financial infrastructure.
Based on the application trends from this Alliance cohort, early-stage US startup projects have noticeably transitioned from “issuing assets” to “building real products.” Stablecoins are no longer just payment tools; they are the infrastructure of on-chain finance. AI functions more as an enhancement to existing products. The focus of prediction markets has shifted from platforms to derivative applications like ETFs and options. Robotics and physical AI are beginning to integrate with crypto settlement. Khan’s stated “rails first” strategy further reflects that founders are prioritizing underlying utility and long-term distribution capabilities over short-term narratives.
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