Polymarket와 Kalshi가 97.5%의 거래량을 장악하고 있는 상황에서, 예측 시장에 다크호스는 존재할까?

Original Title: The State of Prediction Markets: 2026

Original Author: Jack Haldorsson

Original Translation: Peggy

Editor's Note: Prediction markets are evolving from niche crypto applications into more mainstream financial and information markets.

The 2024 US presidential election brought Polymarket and Kalshi into the public eye, but what truly changed the industry narrative was that trading volume didn't disappear immediately after the election. Sports, technology, and economic markets absorbed the traffic, proving that the long-term demand for prediction markets doesn't solely stem from political events.

This article outlines the core landscape of prediction markets in 2026: a duopoly between Polymarket and Kalshi. The former leverages on-chain trading, USDC settlement, and media distribution to expand its influence, while the latter relies on CFTC compliance qualifications and channels like Robinhood to enter mainstream financial scenarios. On the other side, a new wave of platforms seeks opportunities in short-cycle trading, sports predictions, media integration, on-chain native metrics, and infrastructure layers.

More importantly, the competition in prediction markets is no longer just about trading volume; it's a comprehensive battle involving liquidity, distribution capabilities, and regulatory pathways. Simultaneously, issues like wash trading, disputes over volume statistics, expectations of token airdrops, and state-level regulatory pressures highlight that this sector remains in a highly uncertain stage.

Prediction markets are no longer just a DeFi experiment. They are becoming a new asset class at the intersection of financial trading, media content, and algorithmic strategies. Platforms that may truly break out in the future are likely not generalized replicas, but those with clear vertical use cases and distribution advantages.

Here is the original text:

Two platforms hardly heard of in 2022 settled a notional trading volume last year surpassing the GDP of New Zealand.

In 2025, the combined trading volume of Kalshi and Polymarket reached $44 billion. In May 2026, Kalshi raised $1 billion at a $22 billion valuation. Meanwhile, ICE, the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange, committed to investing $2 billion in Polymarket at a $9 billion valuation. AI agents are now executing over 30% of on-chain transactions. Simultaneously, a group of new teams are building vertically specialized platforms on Base, Solana, Hyperliquid and Arweave—all betting on the thesis that the two giants cannot monopolize every category.

This might be the most comprehensive overview of the prediction market builder ecosystem currently available.

The Numbers That Rewrote the Narrative

2024 was the year of validation for prediction markets. The single US presidential election market alone generated $3.3 billion in volume for Polymarket. During the campaign, almost every major financial news outlet began reporting on prediction market odds. Bloomberg, Politico, and FiveThirtyEight all cited this data in their analyses.

But what happened after November 5th surprised many: trading volume didn't fall back to its previous baseline. Sports markets absorbed the flow.

By the end of 2025, sports markets accounted for 85% of Kalshi's volume and 39% of Polymarket's volume. Tech & Science markets grew 1,637% year-over-year, and Economic markets grew 905%. Political markets—the vertical widely considered the core driver of prediction markets—grew only 43%.

Prediction markets found their long-term engine, and it wasn't elections.

The Duopoly Landscape

Polymarket runs on Polygon, settles in USDC, and intentionally charges no fees on most markets to prioritize building volume dominance. In October 2025, ICE made a $2 billion strategic investment at a ~$9 billion post-money valuation. In June 2025, X announced Polymarket as its official prediction market partner. In February 2026, Substack natively integrated Polymarket's real-time odds data; within weeks, one in five of the top 250 revenue-generating publications on Substack were using this data. The platform's CMO also confirmed that the POLY token and airdrop are forthcoming. Once full functionality is live, its projected annualized fee revenue is expected to exceed $200 million.

Kalshi, on the other hand, secured a Designated Contract Market designation from the CFTC, becoming the first event contract platform to do so, and turned this into a distribution moat. This compliance qualification is what allowed Kalshi to enter Robinhood. In 2025 alone, Robinhood facilitated over 4 billion event contract trades. In January 2025, Kalshi launched Super Bowl-related markets. Within less than 12 months, sports markets skyrocketed from about 10% of its volume to over 85%. In May 2026, Kalshi completed a $1 billion funding round at a $22 billion valuation, led by Coatue, with participation from Sequoia, a16z, Paradigm, Morgan Stanley, and ARK. At the time of the funding, Kalshi had approximately 2 million monthly active users, an annualized trading volume of ~$178 billion, and annualized revenue of ~$1.5 billion.

Throughout 2025, these two companies controlled approximately 97.5% of the entire prediction market industry's volume.

Ecosystem Map

The Challengers

Beyond the duopoly, over a dozen teams are building new prediction market platforms. Each targets a specific gap.

@trylimitless is deployed on Base, focusing on short-cycle markets including 15-minute, hourly, and daily markets, targeting cryptocurrency and stock traders seeking quick settlements. The project raised $10 million from firms like 1confirmation, Coinbase Ventures, F-Prime, DCG, and Arrington. In Q1 2026, its monthly trading volume reached $1.1 billion. Following the $LMTS token launch, its fully diluted valuation briefly hit $800 million.

@MyriadMarkets runs on the Abstract chain, integrating Linea, Celo, and BNB. It bets on "media-native" prediction markets. Its first distribution partnership occurred in December 2025 when it embedded prediction features into Trust Wallet. It now has over 430,000 users, having completed over 1.7 million predictions. The project is founded by the team behind Decrypt and Rug Radio.

KASH is embedded in X via @kash_bot, allowing users to create and trade prediction markets in quote tweets. In February 2026, KASH raised $2 million from firms including Big Brain Holdings, Spartan, Coinbase Ventures, Animoca, and the Sui Foundation. Its core thesis is that whoever has the shortest path to users' existing environments will win the prediction market.

@DriftProtocol is built on top of Drift Protocol's $500 million Solana liquidity pool. It supports over 30 collateral assets, allows cross-margined positions, and offers FUEL rewards.

@HedgehogMarket targets on-chain native metrics like Base fees, funding rates, validator performance, while also offering general binary options on Solana and Eclipse. The platform supports permissionless market creation and once peaked at a TVL of around $20 million.

@HyperliquidX's HIP-4 went live on May 2, 2026, co-designed by John Wang, Kalshi's Head of Crypto. The mechanism is fully collateralized in USDH, uses a CLOB order book model, and charges no opening fees. The first market was deployed by Hyperliquid itself, centered on BTC outcomes, generating $6 million in volume on its first day. Currently, @Outcomexyz is the primary frontend for HIP-4, contributing over 10 times the volume of any other interface.

@azuroprotocol functions more as infrastructure than a user-facing frontend product. It provides a sports prediction market layer for other teams, utilizing a Liquidity Tree liquidity pool design. The project has raised $11 million from firms like Delphi Digital, Gnosis, and Arrington Capital.

@Overtime_io operates on Optimism, Arbitrum, and Base. All protocol revenue flows into $OVER token buybacks.

@RobinhoodApp, powered by Kalshi's backend, facilitated over 2 billion event contract trades in Q3 2025 alone.

The infrastructure layer is also heating up. In August 2025, @theclearingco completed a $15 million seed round from investors including Union Square Ventures, Haun Ventures, Coinbase Ventures, and Variant. The company was founded by former executives from Polymarket and Kalshi. Capital flowing into the clearinghouse layer typically signals that an asset class is maturing.

Core Drivers in 2026

Regulated platforms are seeking on-chain rails. Kalshi is tokenizing markets and deploying them on Solana, Polymarket is pursuing US CFTC compliance through its acquisition of QCEX, and Hyperliquid's HIP-4 was co-designed by Kalshi. All these moves point in the same direction: a global liquidity layer at the base, with different regional regulatory overlays on top.

AI agents have become an undeniable part of prediction market activity. According to data from analytics platform LayerHub, over 30% of wallets on Polymarket are running AI agents. Olas's Polystrat Agent executed over 4,200 trades in its first month, with a peak return of 376% on a single position. Elastics also raised $2 million, aiming to build a natural language trading interface.

Whether platform teams designed it this way initially or not, prediction markets are evolving into algorithmic trading venues.

Media platforms are treating prediction odds as high-engagement content. X's official partnership agreement, Substack's native integration, and Google Finance displaying real-time odds all serve the same fundamental role: transforming financial questions into collectively discussable media events, thus driving organic user acquisition.

Sports are the most persistent vertical. The 2024 US election brought in the first wave of users, but sports kept them there. Any new platform raising funds in 2026 without a sports strategy is either building deep infrastructure or making a highly concentrated bet on a specific niche.

Real Challenges

Three risks are worth pointing out directly.

First, the volume metric itself is disputed. A Paradigm analysis published in December 2025 indicated that Polymarket's NegRisk architecture causes double-counting in most third-party data tracking tools. CertiK estimated that during parts of 2024, wash trading accounted for nearly 60% of Polymarket's peak volume. Therefore, the $44 billion figure should be treated as a directional reference, not a strictly audited, accurate data point.

Second, state-level legal friction is real. As of January 2026, related federal lawsuits had exceeded 19. In March 2026, Ohio ruled that Kalshi's sports products constitute gambling. Attorneys General in Wisconsin and Arizona have also taken action against the two major platforms respectively. The tailwind at the federal level from the CFTC coexists with strong headwinds at the state level, and this tension is unlikely to disappear quickly.

Third, token speculation is inflating platform activity. In 2025 and early 2026, a significant portion of trading volume was related to market expectations for the POLY airdrop. Any platform publishing impressive volume figures without providing this context is misleading its readers.

Conclusion

In 2024, prediction markets made the leap from "interesting DeFi experiments" to a financial asset class. By 2025, they began building institutional pipelines: strategic investments from exchange parent companies, CFTC-related settlements, Robinhood integrations, and seed funding in the clearinghouse layer.

By 2026, the real question this sector must answer has become: Besides Kalshi and Polymarket, who else has a chance to win?

The current answer is: teams that deeply cultivate a vertical, possess clear distribution advantages, and can find either a regulatory protected path or on-chain liquidity density.

The opportunity for generalized replicas is over. Beyond that, other paths remain open.

If you are also building in this field and looking for the right growth architecture for your vertical, feel free to talk.

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