The prediction market "dual oligopoly" leads the charge, with over 150 projects competing for the World Cup.

Original Author: momo, ChainCatcher

Prediction markets are one of the most "capital-attracting" fields in Crypto recently, and they are a rare existence that has gained momentum even in a bear market.

On March 27, Polymarket received another $600 million investment from ICE, the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange, with total fundraising reaching $2.879 billion; its competitor Kalshi is not far behind, with total funding of $2.515 billion and a valuation of $22 billion.

Although leading players have significantly outpaced others in funding scale and trading activity, new entrants continue to emerge. Major exchanges, including Binance and Coinbase, are also accelerating their layout through wallet integration, acquisitions, and other means. For example, Binance Wallet just announced the launch of a prediction market feature, connecting with Predict.fun as its provider. Paradigm is also developing prediction market trading terminals aimed at professional traders and market makers.

With the World Cup approaching (about two months until kickoff), the prediction market is likely to welcome a new round of traffic peaks.

This article will analyze the latest landscape of prediction markets from the perspective of financing and investment and review some early representative projects and their differentiated paths.

Nearly $6 billion in funding, but one-third of projects have ceased operations

According to incomplete statistics from RootData, over 50 out of more than 230 prediction market projects have secured public financing, with a total amount reaching $5.687 billion.

However, it is worth noting that among these more than 230 projects, only over 150 are still operational, while more than 70 have ceased operations, reflecting that although the field has a strong ability to attract capital, project survival is not easy.

Additionally, the capital distribution in this field is extremely concentrated. Polymarket and Kalshi together account for $5.394 billion, about 94.85% of the total funding amount in the field. This means the remaining more than 50 projects share only about 5% of the funding, with capital highly concentrated in the hands of the "two giants." Among them:

There are a total of 7 projects with funding of $10 million and above (excluding Polymarket and Kalshi), specifically: Novig ($75 million), Opinion ($25 million), Space ($20 million public offering, community questions about a possible soft Rug), Limitless ($17 million), The Clearing Company ($15 million, now acquired); Noise ($14.1 million), Polynado ($10 million).
There are 3 projects with funding between $5 million and $10 million, namely: AetheriumX ($8 million), 42 ($7.2 million), Augur ($5 million).

The vast majority of disclosed projects have funding scales below $5 million, and funding stages are highly concentrated in seed rounds and pre-seed rounds.

From the perspective of funding rhythm, the attention to capital in prediction markets has significantly increased since the second half of 2024 and is expected to further accelerate into an active period by 2025. By the first four months of 2026, there have already been 16 funding events, almost maintaining a "weekly occurrence" frequency. Overall, on one hand, leading projects continue to receive large capital injections, while on the other hand, early projects are also beginning to receive tentative investments intensively, with the industry showing a dual characteristic of "strengthening the head + tail expansion."

At the same time, leading players are accelerating their layout in prediction markets through acquisitions. Polymarket acquired the prediction market API company Dome, Coinbase acquired The Clearing Company founded by former growth executives of Kalshi and Polymarket, and Gemini acquired an early-stage player in the field, Guesser.

In a dual oligopoly, how can early projects break through?

Apart from the two giants, Polymarket and Kalshi, other early projects find it hard to compete directly in terms of funding and scale, so they seek breakthroughs in segmented scenarios, trading mechanisms, and product positioning.

One obvious direction is verticalization. For example, Novig focuses solely on sports predictions, avoiding politics and entertainment, and deeply engages with a single category.

Another direction is innovation in trading mechanisms. Noise and OmenX choose to directly introduce derivative leverage mechanisms into the prediction market; 42 packages each prediction result into a small token similar to meme coins, allowing for buying and selling at any time on a bonding curve. This “prediction equals trading” approach 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" of prediction markets, using AI to actively discover trends and generate markets; Kairos and TradeFox are cross-platform aggregated trading terminals that help users manage positions in multiple prediction markets in one stop. They do not directly compete for Polymarket's users but attempt to become the underlying infrastructure of the entire field.

In addition, compliance and capital efficiency are also areas for differentiation. Novig uses a sweepstakes model (free coins + cash coins) to avoid being defined as gambling, while predict.fun allows users' prediction funds to generate additional returns simultaneously during participation.

Another group of projects focuses on traffic entry and distribution layers. Melee enhances users' social sharing; Myriad embeds prediction functionality directly into media pages like Twitter and YouTube through a browser plugin, allowing users to place bets while consuming content. They do not attempt to have users proactively "walk into" a prediction market but instead bring predictions directly to users.

The involvement of AI is also lowering the barrier to creating prediction markets. worm.wtf allows users to input prompts, and the AI generates prediction markets with one click; Polynado similarly uses AI to automatically discover emerging trends and build markets in advance. This shifts the supply side of prediction markets from “manual topic selection” to “algorithm-driven.”

Overall, leading players compete for funds and scale, while small and medium projects demonstrate various capabilities in vertical scenarios, trading mechanisms, tool positioning, AI generation, and traffic distribution. Below is a summary of some early projects:

1、Novig

Novig is the prediction market project with the most funding after Polymarket and Kalshi. Established in 2021, it recently secured $75 million in funding led by Pantera Capital, with a post-investment valuation of $500 million.

Novig's distinguishing feature is its exclusive focus on the sports sector. It currently operates using a sweepstakes (lottery) model to avoid being classified as “gambling.” What does this mean?

It utilizes two types of virtual currencies:

Free Coins (Novig Coins): Users receive these for free and use them to participate in various “games” or “predictions” on the platform. Since users do not buy participation opportunities with real money, this does not constitute “gambling” in legal terms.
Cash Coins (Novig Cash): Users need to purchase these with real money or earn them through participation in activities. Rewards earned using this currency can be exchanged for real cash. This resembles a virtual currency setup in games, where users typically purchase “virtual currency packs” to gain more “game opportunities” or better experiences. This essentially means using real money for gambling, but in legal documents, users are “purchasing virtual goods,” not “placing bets.”

Novig has officially applied for a Designated Contract Market (DCM) license from the CFTC (Commodity Futures Trading Commission), with the aim of legally operating in all 50 states and becoming a regulated prediction market exchange, with a monthly trading volume of about $300 million.

On the team side, both co-founders Jacob Fortinsky are Harvard graduates with investment banking experience.

2、Opinion（OPN）

Opinion (formerly O.LAB) is a prediction market in the BNB Chain ecosystem that has completed two rounds of financing from YZi Labs. Opinion’s three rounds of funding have exceeded $25 million, with institutions like Hack VC, Amber Group, Animoca Ventures, and Jump participating as investors. The token was launched at the beginning of March.

Opinion’s feature is its incorporation of the AI concept, mentioning that the platform uses AI Oracles to assist in market creation and prediction generation.

However, during the TGE period, Opinion's funding, trading volume data, and airdrop were met with skepticism from the market.

3、Limitless（LMTS）

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

Limitless's prediction content allows for short-term price prediction trading of crypto assets, stocks, and more.

The founder & CEO/CTO has previously worked at Gitcoin and is a holder of the Optimism citizen badge. The COO Roman Mogylnyi was a co-founder of the viral AI face-swapping application Reface.

4、Polynado

Polynado positions itself as an AI-native prediction infrastructure, and in December 2025, it completed $10 million in investments from LD Capital, Waterdrip Capital, and others.

It is not an independent prediction market platform but aims to construct a "Bloomberg Terminal-level" intelligence data layer for on-chain prediction markets represented by Polymarket, actively discovering emerging trends, automatically generating markets, and pre-constructing and trading these markets before they draw attention.

5、predict.fun

Binance Wallet recently announced the launch of a prediction market, with predict.fun as its main provider. In December 2025, predict.fun announced it had secured investment from YZi Labs.

The model of predict.fun allows user participation funds to no longer remain idle, but instead generate additional returns during the prediction period. It also acquired another prediction market, Probable, in early March.

The founder of predict.fun, dingaling, was formerly the head of research at Binance, a co-founder of PancakeSwap, and a well-known NFT whale. He also founded the token launch platform boop.fun. However, dingaling has faced community skepticism regarding his entrepreneurial pursuits that seem to ride on trends, and there have been rumors of disputes with Binance and CZ.

6、Melee

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

Melee emphasizes social and viral dissemination. It allows users to create fact or opinion markets (such as pop culture, sports) without permission, and the platform enhances user engagement through social integration (such as one-click sharing on X/Discord).

Additionally, Melee offers a unique feature that allows users to buy into the "overall market" (shares of all outcomes) instead of betting Yes/No or multiple-choice on results, which is akin to betting on the growth and popularity of an entire topic rather than a specific outcome. This suits users who are optimistic about topic popularity but uncertain about specific results.

7、The Clearing Company（acquired by Coinbase）

The Clearing Company has been acquired by Coinbase and previously completed $15 million in seed funding, led by USV, with participation from well-known institutions such as Coinbase Ventures.

Its founder, Toni Gemayel, was the growth director at Kalshi and Polymarket, aiming to merge the openness of decentralization with the credibility of compliance regulation to create a next-generation prediction market that can be accepted by retail investors while gaining regulatory favor.

8、AetheriumX

AetheriumX is an early prediction market project that completed $8 million in strategic financing in January this year, with participation from CGV, GAINS Associates, DuckDAO, Genesis Capital, and others.

According to official information, its feature allows users' funds to be dynamically routed to different DeFi protocols, RWA, or GameFi activities, improving capital efficiency.

9、Myriad

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

Its focus is to embed prediction markets into news and social media pages like Twitter, YouTube, and Decrypt through a browser extension, allowing users to participate in predictions using stablecoins while browsing content.

Myriad has been integrated into Trust Wallet.

10、Noise

Noise is a prediction market in the Base ecosystem. It has raised over $14 million in funding, with Paradigm being the lead investor in the seed round, and GSR, Figment Capital, Kaito and other institutions or projects also participating.

Noise's feature differs from Polymarket's binary betting on event outcomes; it allows users to engage in leveraged trading on a topic, trend, or brand, fundamentally transforming "internet attention" into a tradable financial asset.

Noise opened its testnet in May of last year and has recently opened applications for its waiting list.

11、42

42 was formerly known as Alkimiya and has since been renamed 42. In 2021 and 2023, the team received investments from Castle Island Ventures, 1kx, Coinbase Ventures, Dragonfly, Circle Ventures, and others.

The unique aspect of 42 is that it combines the mechanism of “predicting events” with “meme coin launching,” making every possible outcome of an event into a small token akin to a meme coin.

You can trade these on a bonding curve, similar to trading meme coins. When the event concludes (for example, once election results are out or a game ends), the platform will conduct a final settlement based on the actual results.

12、Kairos

Kairos is not an independent prediction market platform; it is a Web3 prediction market trading terminal, a unified execution and intelligence layer that aggregates data and trading functions from multiple prediction markets. Kairos secured $2.5 million in funding led by a16z in February this year.

13、OmenX

OmenX is a decentralized prediction market platform supporting leveraged trading, allowing users to trade on the outcomes of real-world events such as crypto, sports, and finance through buying and selling long and short positions.

On March 30, OmenX announced it had secured several million dollars in funding from Paramita and M77 Ventures.

14、TradeFox

TradeFox (originally factCheck) was incubated by AllianceDAO and initially focused on being a news fact-checking version of Polymarket, allowing users to bet on the truthfulness of already occurred facts. It has since transformed into a prediction market aggregator, focusing on integrating dispersed prediction markets into a seamless trading terminal that permits users to conduct leveraged trading on real-world events (such as political elections, sports events, and crypto price fluctuations). The trading interface bears strong resemblance to Hyperliquid. TradeFox has gone live on the mainnet.

15、worm.wtf

worm.wtf is a prediction market within the Solana ecosystem. It supports AIGC, allowing users to simply input prompts, enabling the platform to help users immediately generate prediction markets.

Conclusion

The growth of prediction markets is far from over. In the first quarter of 2026, the trading volume in the field reached $75 billion, a 70% increase from the previous quarter. It is expected that during the World Cup, prediction markets will further break out.

What is more noteworthy is the accelerating adoption in traditional finance. JPMorgan's CEO has expressed consideration for providing prediction market services, while Wall Street brokers like Clear Street and Marex are actively getting involved. These signals provide significant imaginative space for the future traffic, compliance, and commercialization of prediction markets.

In terms of market structure, it is anticipated that the situation of highly concentrated stakes is difficult to change in the short term. Both funding and trading volume are currently firmly concentrated on Polymarket and Kalshi, and their compliance layouts are also accelerating.

Given that nearly one-third of the more than 230 projects have ceased operations, the difficulty of successfully establishing a prediction market is higher than imagined. Dragonfly partner Haseeb Qureshi has predicted that 90% of prediction market products will be ignored by the end of the year. This is not alarmist; with the moat built by leading players through liquidity, regulated distribution, and continuous subsidies, later entrants find it difficult to break through purely by imitation.

However, in the medium to long term, new players do have opportunities. Delphi Digital points out that the real breakthrough lies not in direct competition with Polymarket, but in splitting the tech stack and serving different user types. For example, aggregation terminals and advanced analysis tools meet the needs of professional traders; social interfaces attempt to tap into a broader mass entertainment market. Moreover, the inclusion of AI Agents will rapidly close the arbitrage space in binary markets, facilitating the movement of capital toward new mechanisms. Prediction markets are evolving into infrastructure for options, insurance, and governance, rather than merely speculative tools.

For average users, in the current influx of new projects, caution is necessary to avoid the risk of “being reversed.” Opinion is a recent example: impressive funding, AI narratives, and backing from major institutions, yet it faced data skepticism, diminished airdrop post-TGE, and community backlash; similar scripts are expected to be repeated.

The field is far from being fixed, but for those who loudly claim to “disrupt Polymarket and Kalshi,” it might be wise to let the bullets fly a bit longer.

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