Original author: KarenZ, Foresight News

Prediction markets, a financial tool that uses collective intelligence to predict future events, experienced unprecedented explosive growth in 2024-2025.

Platforms represented by Polymarket and Kalshi have repeatedly exceeded the $100 million mark in daily trading volume, and the cumulative trading volume has reached tens of billions of dollars, marking a key turning point for the prediction market from a niche tool to the mainstream financial market.

But beneath this façade of prosperity lie undercurrents. The mid- and low-end markets of leading platforms, as well as the vast majority of emerging platforms, are plagued by the common challenge of insufficient liquidity. Regulatory uncertainty, like the "Sword of Damocles," remains a core risk for the industry's development. Meanwhile, emerging platforms are actively exploring differentiated paths to success amidst fierce competition. Based on this, this article will comprehensively review and analyze the core platforms of the Web3 prediction market.

Leading platforms: a duopoly

Polymarket

Network : Polygon

Is there a native token? Currently, there is no native token. However, Decrypt previously cited sources as saying that Polymarket plans to issue a crypto token after re-entering the US market, but this may not be implemented until 2026.

Market Size: As of mid-October, Polymarket's cumulative trading volume exceeded $20 billion, with daily trading volume reaching tens of millions to hundreds of millions of dollars, and total user base exceeding 1.4 million. This year, Polymarket's market share has been impacted, with Kalshi catching up to and even surpassing it.

Core features:

• No KYC is required, and it supports top-ups through multiple tokens in multiple networks such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, as well as bank card and PayPal deposits.
• Only USDC is used for settlement through smart contracts.
• Adopting order book model.
• Polymarket does not charge transaction fees.
• The market is rich in variety. Sorted by current open interest, the political and cryptocurrency sectors dominate, and other popular sectors include sports, Trump, culture, and economy.
• Results are verified using the UMA Protocol's Optimistic Oracle. The newly launched 15-minute crypto asset up/down prediction market is powered by Chainlink oracles.
• Provide USDC liquidity incentives and holding rewards.
• The liquidity is relatively sufficient, and it is one of the decentralized prediction markets with the largest trading volume.
• A large user base and high market activity make it easier to promote information discovery and truth-based transactions.

Key progress in the past six months:

• In June, Polymarket predicted a market merging Grok analysis and X post citations.
• In July, the U.S. Department of Justice concluded its investigation into Polymarket. Subsequently, Bloomberg reported, citing multiple sources, that Polymarket had spent $112 million to acquire the smaller exchange QCX, marking its return to the U.S. market.
• In August, Polymarket secured tens of millions of dollars in investment from a venture capital fund run by Donald Trump Jr., the president's eldest son. Donald Trump Jr. will also join Polymarket's advisory board.
• In September, Polymarket received approval from the CFTC to go online in the United States.
• In early October, Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange, made a $2 billion strategic investment in Polymarket, valuing the company at $9 billion. Polymarket CEO Shayne Coplan also disclosed two previously unannounced funding rounds: a $150 million round led by Founders Fund earlier this year, and a $55 million round led by Blockchain Capital before last year's election.
• As of mid-October, Polymarket's cumulative trading volume exceeded US$20 billion.

insufficient:

• Access to the platform was initially restricted to US users due to regulatory issues, but will soon be reopened to US users.
• Relying on the UMA protocol for dispute resolution may result in issues such as delayed result verification.
• The lack of depth in the mid- and tail-end markets is a common pain point across the entire industry.

Kalshi

Kalshi is a CFTC-regulated exchange for event contracts, a marketplace where users trade the outcomes of real-world events. Since 2025, Kalshi has surpassed Polymarket in growth.

Are there any tokens? No

Market size: As of October 19, Kalshi’s open interest reached $250 million, higher than Polymarket ($2.15), with cumulative notional volume reaching $12.2 billion.

Features:

• Compliant, mandatory KYC, currently only open to US users.
• It supports debit cards, Wire, and bank transfers, as well as deposits of tokens such as USDC and SOL through Ethereum, Solana, Base, Arbitrum, and Optimism.
• Settlement is in fiat currency USD (if deposited in cryptocurrency, it will be converted to fiat currency by Zero Hash).
• Adopting order book model.
• Provide liquidity incentives and trading volume incentive plans.
• An interest rate accrual program has been introduced for cash and open positions, with the current API set at 3.75%. This interest rate is variable and subject to change at any time.
• Dynamic fee mechanism, please click here for details.
• In mid-October, Kalshi partnered with the oracle project Pyth Network to bring real-time, regulated prediction market data to the chain.
• There are a wide variety of markets, arranged by current open interest, with sports and politics dominating, while other popular versions include economy, crypto, entertainment, and elections.

insufficient:

• US compliance is a benefit, but it also means limited flexibility, such as KYC requirements (which have both advantages and disadvantages) and geographical restrictions.
• Due to regulatory restrictions, certain types of markets cannot be opened.
• The platform charges transaction fees.
• Community users reported that the price difference was large.
• The mid- and tail-end markets lack depth, but this is a pain point for all prediction markets.

Important progress in the past six months

• In May 2025, Kalshi Inc. hired Donald Trump Jr. as its strategic advisor and is working with Musk's xAI.
• In June 2025, Kalshi completed a $185 million financing round at a valuation of $2 billion, led by Paradigm.
• In June 2025, the US online investment platform Webull launched hourly cryptocurrency contract trading to retail investors through Kalshi.
• In July 2025, xAI will integrate its Grok conversational model into the prediction market Kalshi.
• In early October 2025, John Wang, head of Kalshi cryptocurrency, said that the prediction market platform Kalshi will be available on "every major cryptocurrency application and exchange" within the next 12 months.
• In October 2025, Kalshi completed a $300 million funding round, with a valuation of $5 billion. In addition, the company plans to announce that it will begin accepting bets from customers in more than 140 countries.

Emerging prediction markets

Mainnet/Alpha/Beta versions are now available:

Limitless:

Limitless is a decentralized prediction market platform built on the Base network. It is the largest prediction market in the Base ecosystem. In October 2025, it was decided to expand to the BNB Chain.

Market size: As of mid-October, Limitless's cumulative trading volume was US$511 million. Although it is far less than Polymarket and Kalshi, it ranks among the top in the emerging prediction market.

Token: The Limitless token, LMTS, launched on October 22nd, currently has a FDV of $300 million. Regarding token economics, the total supply is 1 billion, with 25% allocated to investors, 1.37% to the Kaito presale, 1.26% to the Echo round, 25% to the team, 24.37% to ecosystem rewards (airdrops and bonuses) (all unlocked in the first quarter's TGE airdrop), and 10% each to the treasury and liquidity.

Token Utility:

• Staking tokens unlocks fee discounts.
• Tokens are integrated directly into challenges, bounties, and incentive programs on the platform.
• Part of the platform fees will be used to buy back tokens.

Two days before Limitless issued its token, on October 22, 2025, it completed a $10 million seed round of financing, led by 1confirmation, bringing the total financing to $18 million.

Features:

• Supports depositing USDC via Coinbase or Base network.
• Adopting order book model.
• Focusing on cryptocurrency and stock price predictions, it provides 30-minute, hourly, daily, and weekly market forecasts.
• Unique trading mechanism: supports splitting and merging of shares. One dollar can be split into one "Yes" share and one "No" share, and vice versa, the two can be merged back into one dollar, providing traders with a seamless buy/sell experience across Yes/No assets and high trading flexibility.
• Negrisk Classification Market: A special multi-outcome prediction market where only one outcome can win. The "No" contracts for all outcomes are interconnected, supporting the conversion of "No" shares to "Yes" shares of other outcomes, enabling fast position switching.
• Most markets are resolved by Pyth Network.
• Fees: For AMM markets, a fixed fee of 0.25% is charged on all trades. In order book markets, only takers are charged fees, ranging from 0.03% to 3%, with lower fees paid when risk is low and higher fees paid when returns are high.
• Incentives: LP rewards, points system (future airdrops).

Disadvantages/Risks:

• Liquidity and market risk.
• High functional complexity: Mechanisms such as share splitting/merging and Negrisk market share conversion require a certain learning cost for novice users, and they need to understand the underlying logic to use it efficiently.
• Regulatory uncertainty.

Opinion

Opinion was selected for the 7th season of Yzi Labs' MVB accelerator program in 2024 and subsequently received investment from Yzi Labs. In March 2025, Opinion Labs announced the completion of a $5 million seed round of funding, led by Yzi Labs. Other investors included angel investor community Echo, Animoca Ventures, Manifold Trading, and Amber Group.

Opinion is currently in closed beta, requiring an invitation code for access. In mid-October, Opinion Labs announced the official launch of its new brand, "Opinion." While retaining general prediction markets for news, sports, and other topics, the Opinion mainnet will focus on "macroeconomic forecasting infrastructure" in its first phase. Users will be able to trade indicators such as CPI, interest rates, and employment to hedge macroeconomic risks.

Opinion launched on BNB Chain on October 23rd and will introduce the OPN Trading Points system, building the BNB Chain ecosystem's first macroeconomic and comprehensive prediction market. Opinion will also open AI-driven permissionless market creation and oracle capabilities after the mainnet launch. The platform is committed to building a macroeconomic prediction ecosystem by combining its AI oracles, prediction markets, and liquidity infrastructure: Opinion Metapool and Opinion Protocol.

Melee

Melee is a Solana ecosystem prediction market that completed a $3.5 million Pre-Seed round of funding in September 2025, with participation from Variant, DBA, and others. On October 21, Melee launched its Alpha version.

Features:

• Melee claims to be a combination of Pumpfun and Polymarket, allowing anyone to create a prediction market on any event.
• Melee also allows users to bet on the overall growth of the market through the Melee All feature, which allows them to invest in all outcomes in the market.
• Creators can also monetize their audience.
• Unlike most prediction markets, Melee’s outcome pricing follows a bonding curve, which allows speculators to profit by making correct predictions early.

PMX

PMX, formerly Polymarket's Telegram trading bot, recently evolved into the Meteora-powered Solana permissionless prediction market launchpad. The Polycule team previously received $560,000 in funding from Alliance DAO. The PCULE token has since been rebranded as PMX, with a current market capitalization of $16 million.

Features:

• Anyone can create a prediction market, similar to issuing tokens on a bonding curve, but using a pre-sale model and requiring a fundraising target ($1,000 to $20,000) and clearly written market resolution criteria.
• PMX converts each prediction market into two tokens: “YES” and “NO” tokens are minted and added to the liquidity pool. The price is rebalanced through the arbitrage wallet, and the sum of the two tokens reaches $1.
• Using the AMM model (in partnership with Meteora), anyone can provide liquidity.
• Prediction markets on PMX can be traded on major Solana DEXs (including Raydium, Orca, Meteora, etc.).
• In terms of fees, each transaction will incur a 1% fee, of which 40% is distributed proportionally to LPs, 10% to market creators, and 50% to PMX.
• Market resolution is currently done in-house and will be automated through AI agents.

Manifold

Manifold is a social prediction market that uses gamification to make predictions fun and accessible. In March, Manifold announced plans to release the MYR token this year, which will also be adopted by Decrypt, Rug Radio, Lucky Trader, and Degenz NFT.

Features:

• Anyone can create a prediction market for free.
• Manifold uses a combination of limit orders and automated market makers. Trades are first filled based on limit orders, and then on the automated market maker.
• The platform uses Mana (Ṁ) virtual currency/in-game currency for users to bet on the market. Mana can be earned through correct predictions, successful trades, creating popular markets, completing tasks, referring friends, or completing bounties. Mana can also be purchased, but it cannot be cashed out, which may reduce the motivation of some users to participate. New users receive 1000M starting capital for free.
• The key components of the multi-chain protocol Myriad Protocol are built on EigenCloud.

insufficient:

• Failure to fulfill the promise will reduce the motivation of some users to participate.
• Relying on the integrity of the creator, the market solution is decided by the creator (in special circumstances, the administrator team will overturn the resolved problem). Although the creator is given a great deal of autonomy, there may be subjective judgment and potential dispute risks.
• Liquidity issues.

Projects that are not yet launched but worth paying attention to

The Clearing Company

The Clearing Company is a prediction market founded by former members of The Clearing Company team. It is on-chain, permissionless and regulated, and will support trading in prediction markets such as crypto, politics, sports, and culture.

The Clearing Company founder and CEO Toni Gemayel previously worked at Polymarket, Kalshi, and Figma. According to the company's website, at least four members of the company's engineering and product teams, in addition to the CEO, came from Polymarket.

The Clearing Company completed a $15 million seed round of financing in August 2025, led by Union Square Ventures, with participation from Haun Ventures, Variant, Coinbase Ventures and others.

pvpfun

Smart infrastructure provider pvpfun is launching its AI-powered prediction DApp, "FUN Predict," on the Mantle Network. FUN Predict will combine high throughput and modular design to enable real-time settlement and scalable market creation. Built on Pvpfun's Vibe Coding AI framework, FUN Predict will enable anyone to create programmable, evolving social financial products.

According to the official profile, the team behind pvpfun is Gametaverse, and its supporters include OKX Ventures, Animoca Brands, Dragonfly, etc.

Overtime

Overtime was formerly the options protocol Thales, which later transformed into a sports prediction market.

Which companies/projects are expanding into prediction market businesses?

Robinhood

Robinhood announced its partnership with Kalshi in March to launch its Prediction Market Hub. The professional and college football prediction market contracts launched by Robinhood in August, along with over 100 new prediction market contracts in October (including those on tariffs, federal policies, and spending cuts), are offered by Robinhood Derivatives, LLC through KalshiEX LLC.

During this year's Token 2049 Summit, Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev said in an interview with Bloomberg that the prediction market has huge potential and has become one of its nine major business lines with annual revenue exceeding US$100 million.

Jupiter

Jupiter launched a beta version of the prediction market in October 2025, with Kalshi providing liquidity.

MetaMask

On October 14, MetaMask announced that it would soon integrate the Polymarket prediction market into its wallet.

Bitget Wallet

Bitget Wallet announced the integration of Limitless prediction market on October 23.

World

In May 2025, World, co-founded by Sam Altman, launched a prediction market, allowing participants to participate directly from the World App via the Kalshi Mini App. In October, the Polymarket Mini App was also launched on World.

Rabby

Web3 wallet Rabby announced on October 22 that it will integrate Polymarket into the wallet.

Drift Protocol

Drift Protocol launched the prediction market BET in August 2024, but there has been no official update or promotion in recent months, and there are no active prediction markets on the official prediction platform.

Prediction Market Aggregator

TradeFox

TradeFox is a prediction market aggregator and broker backed by Alliance DAO and CMT Digital. It has fully integrated Polymarket and will soon integrate prediction markets such as Kalshi, Limitless, and Myriad.

Features: Compared to the native Polymarket interface, it adds advanced filters to help users better screen the market and supports advanced order types (trailing stop-loss, automatic take-profit and stop-loss, and other professional tools).

Web3 veteran prediction platform

Augur

Augur officially launched in July 2018, but had already raised over $5 million through an ICO three years prior. Augur's official Twitter account remained silent from November 2021 to March 2025, when it announced its return. The platform stated that the Lituus Foundation was reviving Augur and exploring a new direction: decoupling oracles from the underlying prediction markets, making Augur a modular, neutral source of truth—capable of connecting to any prediction market, price feed, DAO, game, insurance protocol, and more.

Augur’s oracles will also be cross-chain, allowing queries to originate from any chain that supports cross-chain messaging. Transaction resolution and settlement will remain on Ethereum Layer-1, preserving the economic integrity of the oracles.

Further reading: " Cold Knowledge: The First DApp on Ethereum is a Prediction Market "

Azuro

Azuro claims to be a decentralized protocol for prediction markets, focusing on sports predictions, and provides tools and infrastructure for EVM chains. Some prediction markets are built on it.

summary

The Web3 prediction market is in a stage of rapid development. The "two-horse race" pattern of the leading platforms is stable, and the entry of emerging platforms and cross-border players is further enriching the prediction market ecosystem.

With regulatory clarification and ecosystem integration, prediction markets are expected to play a greater role in areas such as financial information aggregation and risk hedging. However, users should be cautious and take a rational view of the core value of prediction markets, manage risks effectively, and rationally assess the probability of events.