The present disclosure provide for coatings, coated structures, methods of coating, methods of coating a structure, and the like. In an aspect, the coating is a tribocatalytically-active coating, where the tribocatalytically-active coating interacts with the hydrocarbon environment forming a protective carbon-based tribofilm on the surface of the coating, which can be actively formed (reformed) during use of the coated structure within the hydrocarbon environment.