Announcing the Winners: 2025/2026 Block Awards

NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK / ACCESS Newswire / January 16, 2026 / Presented by Webacy, the 2025/2026 Block Awards recognize the infrastructure, institutions, and protocols that have moved crypto from experimentation to real-world economic impact. This year’s awards prioritize adoption, security, regulatory strength, and real utility.

This year, our awards prioritize four critical areas: adoption, security, regulatory strength, and real utility.

We had four categories:

• Best RWA/Privacy Chain: In response to the surge in new chains catering to the needs of institutions and individual privacy.

• Best Stablecoin Innovation: To reflect the many companies that launched and pivoted into stablecoins and responding to market needs around yield, custody, and investing products.

• Best TradFi Crypto Incumbent: Rewarding the largest TradFi companies in the world that have taken the leap into crypto.

• Most Innovative Use of DeFi: As DeFi matured, some teams have built solid, secure innovations to revolutionize yield, investing, and optionality.

How the Block Awards are Judged

Winners were selected using a tailored framework designed around its role in the ecosystem:

• RWA/Privacy Chains: Purpose-built architecture, real value secured, and the balance between compliance and resilience.

• Stablecoin Innovation: Real-world utility, speed and cost advantages, liquidity reliability, and on/off-ramp accessibility.

• TradFi Crypto Incumbents: Depth of on-chain integration, institutional capital migration, and abstraction of crypto complexity.

• Innovative Use of DeFi: Capital efficiency, novelty of financial primitives, and security track record.

The judging panel included executives from Canton, Reown, Hedera, Crossmint, Motive Partners, GSR, Dune, and Arculus. Please see our separate X post appreciating their efforts and place in this ecosystem. Their scoring rubric, combined with a People’s Choice voting system (which saw 1,000+ votes) is what culminated into the final winners. Judges did not judge customers or partners, or themselves.

And without further ado, here are the winners ranked from 1st to 3rd.

Most Innovative Use of DeFi:

1. Uniswap

2. Babylon

3. Morpho

Best Stablecoin Innovation:

1. PayPal

2. Bridge (Stripe)

3. Stable.xyz

Best TradFi Crypto Incumbent:

1. BlackRock

2. Visa

3. Franklin Templeton

Best RWA / Privacy Chain:

1. Canton

2. Ondo Finance / Noble

3. Plume Network

“We’re seeing a clear signal: The market is rewarding infrastructure that actually works at scale and is ultimately trusted,” said Maika Isogawa, CEO of Webacy. “These winners aren’t just experimenting with crypto: They’re operationalizing it in ways that users, institutions, and regulators can rely on.”

This year’s Block Awards reflect a maturing industry – one where security, compliance, capital efficiency, and usability increasingly matter more than hype.

At Webacy and DD.xyz, we will continue building the tools that help users and institutions understand risk, verify trust, and identify real infrastructure leaders.

Congratulations to all of this year’s winners.

CONTACT:
Maika Isogawa
maikaisogawa@webacy.com

SOURCE: DD by Webacy Inc.

View the original press release on ACCESS Newswire