Prediction Market "Duopoly" Leads, Over 150 Projects Vie for the World Cup

Original Author: momo, ChainCatcher

Prediction markets are one of the most "capital-attracting" sectors in Crypto recently, and a rare phenomenon that has heated up against the trend during the bear market.

On March 27, Polymarket once again secured a $6 billion investment from ICE, the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange, bringing its total funding to a staggering $28.79 billion; its competitor Kalshi is not far behind, with total funding of $25.15 billion and a valuation reaching $220 billion.

Despite leading players having a clear advantage in funding scale and trading activity, new entrants continue to emerge. Top exchanges including Binance and Coinbase are also accelerating their layouts through wallet integrations and acquisitions. For example, Binance Wallet just announced the launch of prediction market features, integrating Predict.fun as a provider. Paradigm is also developing a prediction market trading terminal for professional traders and market makers.

With the World Cup approaching (starting in about 2 months), prediction markets are highly likely to welcome a new wave of traffic peaks.

This article will start from the perspective of financing and investment, outline the latest landscape of prediction markets, and review some early representative projects and their differentiated approaches.

Nearly $60 Billion in Funding, But One-Third of Projects Have Ceased Operations

According to incomplete statistics from RootData, among the more than 230 prediction market projects recorded, over 50 have received public funding, with a total funding amount reaching $56.87 billion.

However, it is worth noting that among these 230+ projects, only 150+ are currently operational, while over 70 have ceased operations, with an attrition rate close to one-third, reflecting that although the sector has strong capital attraction, project survival is not easy.

Furthermore, capital distribution in this sector is extremely concentrated. Polymarket and Kalshi together account for $53.94 billion, representing about 94.85% of the sector's total funding. This means the remaining 50+ projects share only about 5% of the funding, with capital highly concentrated in the hands of the "two giants." Among them:

• There are 7 projects (excluding Polymarket and Kalshi) with funding of $10 million or more: Novig ($75 million), Opinion ($25 million), Space ($20 million in public sale, community questions soft rug), Limitless ($17 million), The Clearing Company ($15 million, acquired); Noise ($14.1 million), Polynado ($10 million).
• There are 3 projects with funding between $5 million and $10 million: AetheriumX ($8 million), 42 ($7.2 million), Augur ($5 million).

The vast majority of projects with disclosed amounts have funding scales below $5 million, and the funding stages are highly concentrated in Seed and Pre-Seed rounds.

From a funding rhythm perspective, capital attention to prediction markets has noticeably heated up since the second half of 2024 and further accelerated into an active period in 2025. Entering 2026, the first four months alone have seen 16 funding events, maintaining a frequency of almost "one per week." Overall, on one hand, leading projects continue to receive large capital injections, while on the other hand, early-stage projects are also beginning to receive intensive exploratory funding, showing a dual characteristic of "head reinforcement + long-tail diffusion."

Simultaneously, leading players are accelerating their layout in prediction markets through acquisitions. For example, Polymarket acquired prediction market API company Dome, Coinbase acquired The Clearing Company founded by a former growth lead of Kalshi and Polymarket, and Gemini acquired Guesser, a very early player in the sector.

Under the Duopoly Structure, How Can Early Projects Break Through?

Apart from the two giants, Polymarket and Kalshi, other early-stage projects find it difficult to compete head-on in terms of capital and scale, so they are seeking breakthroughs in niche scenarios, trading mechanisms, and product positioning.

One clear direction is verticalization. For example, Novig focuses solely on sports predictions, avoiding politics and entertainment, aiming to dominate a single category.

Another direction is innovation in trading mechanisms. For instance, Noise and OmenX both choose to directly introduce derivative leverage mechanisms into prediction markets; 42 packages each prediction outcome into a small token similar to a meme coin, allowing for buying and selling at any time on a bonding curve. This "prediction as trading" concept differs from traditional binary betting.

Another group of projects chooses not to be a platform, but to be a tool. Polynado positions itself as the "Bloomberg Terminal" for prediction markets, using AI to proactively discover trends and generate markets; Kairos and TradeFox are cross-platform aggregated trading terminals, helping users manage positions across multiple prediction markets in one place. They don't directly compete for Polymarket's users but attempt to become the underlying infrastructure for the entire sector.

Additionally, compliance and capital efficiency are also areas for differentiated attempts. Novig uses a sweepstakes model (free coins + cash coins) to circumvent gambling definitions; predict.fun allows users' prediction funds to generate additional returns during the participation period.

Another group of projects focuses on traffic entry and distribution. Melee enhances user social sharing; Myriad embeds prediction features directly into media pages like Twitter and YouTube through a browser extension, allowing users to place bets while browsing content. They don't try to get users to actively "enter" a prediction market but bring predictions to the users.

The involvement of AI is also lowering the barrier to creating prediction markets. worm.wtf supports users inputting prompts, with AI generating prediction markets with one click; Polynado similarly uses AI to automatically discover emerging trends and pre-build markets. This shifts the supply side of prediction markets from "manual topic selection" to "algorithm-driven."

In summary, leading players compete on capital and scale, while small and medium-sized projects showcase their strengths in vertical scenarios, trading mechanisms, tool positioning, AI generation, and traffic distribution. Below is a brief overview of some early-stage projects:

1、Novig

Novig is the prediction market project with the most funding besides Polymarket and Kalshi. Founded in 2021, it just secured a $75 million funding round led by Pantera Capital in February this year, with a post-money valuation of $500 million.

Novig's characteristic is its exclusive focus on the sports sector. It currently uses a sweepstakes operational model to avoid being defined as "gambling." What does this mean?

It uses two types of virtual currency:

• Free Coins (Novig Coins): Users obtain these for free to participate in various "games" or "contests" on the platform. Since users do not use real money to purchase participation opportunities, this does not legally constitute "gambling."
• Cash Coins (Novig Cash): Users need to purchase these with real money or obtain them through participation in activities. Rewards won using this currency can be exchanged for real cash. This is similar to virtual currency setups in games, where users typically buy "virtual currency packs" to get more "game opportunities" or a better experience. This is essentially gambling with real money, but legally, users are "purchasing virtual goods," not "placing bets."

Novig has formally applied to the CFTC (Commodity Futures Trading Commission) for a Designated Contract Market (DCM) license, aiming to operate legally in all 50 US states as a regulated prediction market exchange. Its monthly trading volume is approximately $300 million.

Regarding the team, co-founders Jacob Fortinsky both graduated from Harvard and have investment banking experience.

2、Opinion（OPN）

Opinion (formerly O.LAB) is a prediction market in the BNB Chain ecosystem. YZi Labs invested in two consecutive rounds. Opinion's three funding rounds total over $25 million, with participation from institutions like Hack VC, Amber Group, Animoca Ventures, and Jump. It launched its token in early March.

Opinion's characteristic is also its integration of AI concepts, mentioning the platform uses AI Oracle (artificial intelligence oracle) to assist in market creation and prediction generation.

However, during the TGE period, Opinion's funding, trading volume data, and airdrop faced market skepticism.

3、Limitless（LMTS）

Limitless is a social protocol on the Base ecosystem. It has raised a total of $17 million, with participation from Coinbase Ventures, 1 confirmation, and other institutions. Limitless had its TGE in October 2025 but faced community skepticism due to airdrop and other issues.

Limitless's prediction content characteristic is supporting short-term price prediction trading for crypto assets, stocks, etc.

The team founder & CEO/CTO previously worked at Gitcoin and is an Optimism Citizen badge holder. Its COO Roman Mogylnyi was a co-founder of the viral AI face-swap app Reface.

4、Polynado

Polynado positions itself as AI-native prediction infrastructure. In December 2025, it completed a $10 million funding round from investors including LD Capital and Waterdrip Capital.

It is not an independent prediction market platform but aims to build a "Bloomberg Terminal-level" intelligence data layer for on-chain prediction markets represented by Polymarket. It uses AI to proactively discover emerging trends, automatically generate markets, and build and trade these markets before they gain widespread attention.

5、predict.fun

Binance Wallet just announced the launch of prediction markets, with predict.fun as its main provider. predict.fun announced in December 2025 that it had secured investment from YZi Labs.

predict.fun's model characteristic is that it allows users' funds used for predictions to no longer sit idle but to generate additional returns during the prediction period. In early March, it also acquired another prediction market, Probable.

predict.fun founder dingaling was formerly Binance's Head of Research, a PancakeSwap co-founder, a well-known NFT whale, and also founded the token launch platform boop.fun. However, dingaling has also been questioned by the community for pursuing trend-based entrepreneurship and there are rumors of past disputes with Binance and CZ.

Recommended Reading: 《Reconciliation of Rivals? CZ and Former Employee Jointly Launch Prediction Platform predict.fun》

6、Melee

Melee is a prediction market on Solana, positioning itself as "Viral Markets." It completed a $3.5 million pre-seed funding round led by Variant, with participation from DBA and several angel investors including CoinShares Chief Strategy Officer Meltem Demirors, Solana Labs co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko, and Web3 investor Santiago Roel Santos.

Melee's characteristic is its emphasis on social and viral spread. It allows users to permissionlessly create fact or opinion markets (e.g., pop culture, sports), with the platform enhancing user participation through social integration (e.g., one-click sharing to X/Discord).

Additionally, Melee has a unique feature that allows users not to bet on specific outcomes (Yes/No or multiple choices) but to buy the "entire market" (shares of all outcomes). This is equivalent to betting on the overall growth and popularity of a market rather than specific right or wrong outcomes, suitable for users bullish on a topic's popularity but uncertain about specific results.

Recommended Reading: 《Understanding the New Prediction Market Melee: Focus on Socialization, Deep Integration with Creator Economy》

7、The Clearing Company（Acquired by Coinbase）

The Clearing Company has been acquired by Coinbase. It previously completed a $15 million seed funding round led by USV, with follow-on investments from well-known institutions like Coinbase Ventures.

Its founder, Toni Gemayel, was formerly the growth lead at Kalshi and Polymarket. The goal is to merge the openness of decentralization with the credibility of regulatory compliance, creating a new generation of prediction markets acceptable to retail users and favored by regulators.

8、AetheriumX

AetheriumX is an early-stage prediction market project. In January this year, it completed an $8 million strategic funding round with participation from CGV, GAINS Associates, DuckDAO, Genesis Capital, and others.

According to official information, its characteristic is allowing user funds to be dynamically routed to different DeFi protocols, RWA, or GameFi activities, improving capital efficiency.

9、Myriad

Myriad is incubated and built by DASTAN, the parent company of Decrypt and Rug Radio. It recently completed a seed funding round with participation from MoonPay, Thomas Lee, and others.

Its characteristic is its commitment to embedding prediction markets into news and social media pages like Twitter, YouTube, and Decrypt through a browser extension, allowing users to directly participate in predictions using stablecoins while browsing daily content.

Myriad has been integrated into Trust Wallet.

10、Noise

Noise is a prediction market on the Base ecosystem. It has raised over $14 million in total funding, with Paradigm as the lead investor in the seed round. Institutions or projects like GSR, Fig