On the first day of the independent platform launch of the prediction market world, traffic overload occurred, with the first transaction offering a maximum reward of $500.

Written by: Nicky, Foresight News

On September 9, the independent site world.xyz of the Solana prediction market platform world officially launched, opening up to over 1 million users on the waiting list. The subjects covered include all matches of the NFL regular season, 7 major football leagues, F1, the 2026 midterm elections, and the next Federal Reserve interest rate decision.

Previously, since July, World had been operating through an embedded form in the Phantom wallet, launching more than 150,000 markets cumulatively. However, on the day of the independent site's launch, the traffic far exceeded expectations, causing the website to temporarily go offline due to overload.

According to a post by world officials on the early morning of September 10, the traffic on that day was enough to "literally overload the site," and the team has temporarily shut down the website for repairs as a precaution, emphasizing that all funds are secure, and the reward activity will resume after the repairs. As of the time of writing, the website had not resumed operation.

The direct driver of this traffic surge was the simultaneous launch of the first transaction reward activity by the officials.

According to community feedback, the activity process involves creating an account, linking an X account, completing a prediction transaction, and then receiving a reward settled in Phantom USD stablecoin CASH. The officials did not disclose a fixed amount table; rewards vary by person, time period, and qualifications. Some users reported receiving $378, while the community stated that the maximum could be around $500.

Cryptocurrency blogger Chen Xiaomeng claimed that the rewards are related to the number of followers on the X account, with approximately $80 corresponding to 10,000 followers. This statement has not been confirmed by the officials, but the community generally views it as a potential logic behind the activity's design. During the event, there were also technical issues, with some users reporting that USDC deposits did not arrive, recharge addresses changed after refreshing, or that they did not receive rewards after completing transactions. Participation was restricted in some countries, and not all global users could receive rewards.

In fact, world entered the public eye earlier. Foresight News published a report on June 30 of this year titled "World, yet to formally introduce itself, appears in Phantom prediction market disclosures," mentioning that world had not yet launched specific functionalities but had appeared in the disclosure information of the Phantom prediction market.

The settlement system of world is entirely built around the stablecoin CASH. CASH is a US dollar stablecoin designed for everyday use by Phantom, pegged 1:1 to the US dollar, issued through the Open Issuance platform of Bridge and Stripe. The prediction contracts of world are presented in a binary form of "yes/no", with opening and settlement completed in CASH. Users can participate in trading by exchanging USDC or SOL for CASH at the front end, and profits, rewards, and closed positions are all accounted in CASH. This design means that every transaction on world creates a use case for Phantom's stablecoin, rather than relying on external settlement assets like USDC.

Phantom's support for world is not limited to wallet connections. According to information disclosed by Phantom, starting from June 1, 2026, newly opened prediction positions in Phantom will be provided by world Prediction Markets, whereas previously, this entry was via Kalshi and DFlow. By embedding in Phantom, world essentially inherits ready traffic from Solana's largest consumer-end wallet, which is key to its ability to accumulate more than 50,000 independent predictors in a short period.

After the independent site launched, two paths operate in parallel: Phantom provides the front end, wallet, Cash accounts, and user distribution, while world provides market protocols, order routing, and settlement logic, with Chainlink providing high-speed market data and automated settlement through Data Streams and CRE, replacing traditional manual review or token holder voting mechanisms.

From the data, world still has a significant gap compared to mainstream platforms. According to Dune data, the current total prediction transaction volume of world is about $31 million, with approximately 53,600 independent predictors; while according to Dune data, Polymarket had a total weekly trading volume of about $2.34 billion as of August 17, with around 573,000 active addresses in July.

World's choice to attract new users with the first transaction reward instead of points or airdrops is a pragmatic decision in this competitive landscape. The design of linking to an X account helps identify real users and filter out bots, while leveraging social dissemination to expand coverage. If the community's speculation about the reward amount being tied to follower count is true, it means that world is more inclined to attract influential users rather than simply pursuing the number of addresses. According to official information, world currently has no points program and has not disclosed plans for token issuance.

From the perspective of the Solana ecosystem, world’s new user acquisition activities serve two goals simultaneously: to attract new users for the Phantom wallet and to expand the circulation of the CASH stablecoin. According to CoinMarketCap data, CASH currently has a market value of about $125 million, far behind USDT's $188.38 billion and USDC's $74.31 billion. Every transaction and every reward distribution on world increases the actual demand for CASH, and as the largest consumer-end wallet on Solana, Phantom's user base provides a potential distribution network for CASH.

Whether world can retain users after the transaction reward activity ends and convert first-time transaction users into long-term users still needs to be observed.