Original Title: "Betting on the Real World: What Business Are These 8 Prediction Markets Doing?"
Original Author: Viee, Core Contributor at Biteye
Recently, the prediction market sector has seen a surge in interest. In early October, the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange, ICE, announced an investment of up to $2 billion in Polymarket, with a post-investment valuation of approximately $9 billion; a few days later, the U.S. compliant prediction market Kalshi also completed a $300 million financing round, raising its valuation to $5 billion.
With this massive financing, trading volumes on leading platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket have skyrocketed. Kalshi expects its annualized trading volume to reach $50 billion this year, with its global market share exceeding 60%, surpassing Polymarket for the first time.
As the crypto narrative cools and regulatory scrutiny tightens, why are prediction markets being brought back into the spotlight? Has there really been a qualitative change in their product forms? What new generation projects are attempting to break away from the "speculative game" path?
Here are 8 representative project samples that provide insight into the different orientations of this sector in terms of product design, compliance strategies, and financing logic.
01 Polymarket, @Polymarket
Polymarket is currently the largest prediction market platform in the world, having raised $2.279 billion in funding. In October, the parent company of the NYSE, ICE, committed to investing up to $2 billion, bringing Polymarket's pre-investment valuation to $9 billion.
Polymarket was founded by Shayne Coplan in 2020. Shayne participated in Ethereum ICO investments during high school and is regarded as a "prodigy" in the crypto space. In response to regulatory pressure, Polymarket acquired the CFTC-licensed derivatives exchange QCEX for $112 million in 2025, thereby obtaining legal operating qualifications in the U.S.
Polymarket employs a classic prediction market model, allowing users to bet on the outcomes of various real-world events using cryptocurrency. Users participate in the market by purchasing "prediction shares," with each share representing a bet on a specific outcome. When the event outcome is revealed, users holding shares of the correct outcome can receive corresponding profits. The entire trading process occurs on-chain, using USDC for settlement, which ensures fund stability and enhances transparency.
02 Kalshi, @Kalshi
Kalshi is the first licensed and compliant comprehensive prediction market exchange in the U.S., having raised $515 million, led by Paradigm and a16z.
Kalshi was founded in 2018 by Tarek Mansour and Luana Lopes Lara at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The two founders chose a difficult but compliant path, engaging in a long-term battle with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and ultimately becoming the first prediction market platform to receive CFTC regulatory approval.
Since opening the U.S. market in 2021, Kalshi has offered contracts on various events, including political elections, economic indicators, and sports events. In 2024, it won the right to launch contracts for the U.S. presidential election through litigation, filling a compliance gap.
03 The Clearing Company, @theclearingco
The Clearing Company is a prediction market launched by former teams from Kalshi and Polymarket, having raised $15 million. CEO Toni Gemayel previously served as the platform growth lead for both Kalshi and Polymarket.
The platform is currently in the preparation and development stage, with a strong focus on simplifying the user experience. The team hopes the new product will be as easy for ordinary users to use as Robinhood or Coinbase, while also emphasizing the design of compliant products. From the concept, these products attempt to find a compromise between regulatory requirements and lowering the user understanding threshold, but whether they can truly establish an effective market ecosystem remains to be seen.
04 Limitless, @trylimitless
Limitless is a high-frequency prediction market that offers short-term price prediction contracts ranging from minutes to intraday, having raised approximately $7 million, with investments from well-known crypto funds like 1confirmation and Coinbase Ventures. It was founded in 2023 by CJ Hetherington and others.
Limitless officially launched on the Base mainnet in May 2025 and subsequently expanded to Layer 2 solutions like Arbitrum. Its product form is closer to traditional contract exchanges, allowing users to bet "Yes/No" in short-cycle price markets, with a preset expiration time, and the results determined by on-chain oracles at settlement.
From a data performance perspective, Limitless has created numerous ultra-short trading scenarios, with some users utilizing quick and clear results for short-term arbitrage. However, this has also led to criticism within the community: some users pointed out that the platform had launched markets with predetermined outcomes or events that were almost impossible to occur without charging fees, such as a BTC price market within 1.5 hours. This "clear market" was abused by arbitrageurs to inflate trading volume. The team has since responded that they have optimized market generation rules to prevent such situations.
05 Opinion, @opinionlabsxyz
Opinion Labs (O.LAB) has currently raised $5 million, led by YZi Labs, with other investors including Echo, Animoca Ventures, Manifold Trading, and Amber Group.
In terms of progress, Opinion has launched a prediction market on the Monad testnet to gather community feedback and has a collaborative background with Binance Labs.
06 Melee, @meleemarkets
Melee is a new prediction market backed by the Variant fund, claiming to create "Viral Markets"—allowing any topic to generate a prediction market and gain traffic through viral spread. It has completed $3.5 million in funding, with investors including Variant and DAO Builders Alliance (DBA). Co-founder and CEO Max previously served as the strategic lead at Ava Labs and has founded a short video influencer brand, providing unique insights into community operations and business strategies.
As of now, Melee is still in the development and pre-launch phase, with no official product launched yet. The website currently only offers a waiting list registration entry, allowing candidates to join by linking their X accounts. According to official sources, the "viral market" concept promoted by Melee includes three main features: any topic can become a market, creators can monetize in a closed loop, and early participation incentives, positioning itself at the intersection of social and prediction markets, attempting to stimulate widespread participation through a UGC (user-generated market) model.
07 Football.Fun, @footballfun
Football.Fun centers on player predictions, tokenizing real-world professional players into tradable "shares." Users can hold player cards and earn points and settlement rewards based on their performance in real matches. Founder Adam is a member of the WolvesDAO community and has completed $2 million in seed round financing, with investors including 6th Man Ventures, Zee Prime, and Sfermion.
08 Trepa, @trepa_io
Trepa focuses on numerical predictions, allowing users to predict specific values for macroeconomic indicators and receive varying degrees of returns based on the size of the error. It has completed approximately $420,000 in funding, led by Colosseum, a fund created by a former growth lead of the Solana Foundation.
The Trepa team was established in Singapore in 2024, with core members having cross-disciplinary backgrounds. It is currently in the public testing phase, allowing users to choose a prediction topic (mostly macroeconomic or financial data, such as inflation rates of a country or GDP growth rates for a quarter) and submit predictions by dragging a numerical slider or entering specific values. Unlike traditional binary markets that only have "right/wrong" outcomes, Trepa employs a continuous reward mechanism: the closer the predicted value is to the actual result, the higher the reward, allowing for partial returns even if the guess is off.
09 Compliance Risks: The Sector's Greatest Uncertainty
Looking at the eight projects above, it is evident that prediction markets have shown significant differentiation in product design and technical implementation. However, regardless of the model, the common challenge remains how regulators define their legal attributes.
Prediction markets inherently possess characteristics of "speculation + gambling," making them sensitive industries in most jurisdictions. In the U.S., a few projects like Kalshi have obtained compliant licenses, while Polymarket has also attempted to establish a legal path through acquisitions. However, many projects still exist in regulatory gray areas.
Moreover, even on-chain platforms inevitably face the following risks:
- Market manipulation: A small amount of capital may influence price direction, undermining information validity.
- Oracle risk: Errors or attacks on data sources can directly lead to settlement errors.
- Contract security: Some new platforms lack complete audits, posing risks of fund theft.
- Withdrawal difficulties: Some markets have limited liquidity, leading to risks of fund entrapment.
Based on experience, prediction markets generally do not recommend an ALL-IN strategy; instead, a diversified small-bet strategy is advisable to hedge against uncertainties in individual markets. If one is eager to participate, it is also recommended for newcomers to first choose compliant and user-friendly platforms, with Polymarket being a good starting point.
In addition, the biggest barrier for newcomers is understanding the trading mechanisms and technical usage. In prediction markets, placing an order is not as straightforward as simply betting on price movements; it requires understanding the odds or prices representing probabilities. For example, a price of 0.20 means the market believes there is a 20% chance the event will occur, which requires some skill in traditional odds conversion. It is advisable to spend time reading the platform's beginner guides or online educational articles to understand the profit and loss calculations in binary markets.
10 In Conclusion: A Tool or a Variant of Speculation?
Prediction markets are not a new phenomenon. As early as around 2000, many think tanks and economists regarded them as one of the tools for "information integration and social consensus formation." However, the reality is that over the past two decades, prediction markets have failed to achieve large-scale breakthroughs, whether in Web2 scenarios or on-chain applications. On one hand, compliance thresholds have limited their user base; on the other hand, their speculative nature has made it difficult to gain widespread support from public institutions.
The recent resurgence of Polymarket and Kalshi may be a pursuit of new themes in the capital cycle or merely a supplement to market gaming tools. However, it is far from being a force that "changes market structures."
The true turning point for this sector lies not in product forms but in institutional boundaries. Until a complete risk control and access system is established, we must remain calm and observant.
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