Author: Viee, Biteye Core Contributor
Editor: Denise, Biteye core contributor
*The full text is approximately 3800 words, and the estimated reading time is 10 minutes
Recently, it is predicted that the market circuit will rapidly increase in popularity. At the beginning of October, ICE, the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange, announced an investment of up to 2 billion US dollars in PolyMarket, with a post-investment valuation of about 9 billion US dollars; a few days later, US compliance forecasting market Kalshi also completed financing of 300 million US dollars, and the valuation climbed to 5 billion US dollars.
Along with huge financing, the trading volume of leading platforms such as Kalshi and Polymarket has surged. Kalshi expects the annualized transaction volume to reach 50 billion US dollars this year, and the global market share has already exceeded 60%, surpassing Polymarket for the first time.
At a time when the crypto narrative is cooling down and regulations are getting tighter, why is the forecasting market being raised again? Has the shape of its product actually changed qualitatively? What new generation projects are trying to break out of the old path of “speculative games”?
Below are 8 representative project samples, which provide a glimpse into the different directions of this racetrack in product design, compliance games, and financing logic.
01 Ploymarket, @Ploymarket
Polymarket is currently the world's largest forecasting market platform, receiving huge financing of US$2,279 billion. In October, ICE, the parent company of the NYSE, promised to invest up to 2 billion US dollars in it, bringing Polymarket's pre-investment valuation to 9 billion US dollars.
Polymarket was founded by Shayne Coplan in 2020. Shayne participated in the Ethereum ICO investment in high school and is regarded as a “prodigy” in the crypto world. Faced with regulatory pressure, PolyMarket acquired the CFTC-licensed derivatives exchange QCEX for US$112 million in 2025, thus obtaining legal eligibility to operate in the US.
Polymarket is a classic game for predicting the market. Users can use cryptocurrency to bet on the results of various events in the real world and participate in the market by purchasing “predicted shares”. Each share represents a bet on a certain outcome. When the results of the incident are revealed, users holding shares with the correct results can receive corresponding benefits. The entire transaction process is carried out on-chain, and USDC is used for settlement, which not only guarantees the stability of funds, but also enhances transparency.
02 Kalshi, @Kalshi
Kalshi is the first licensed comprehensive forecasting market exchange in the US. It has received $515 million in financing, led by Paradigm and a16z.
Kalshi was founded by Tarek Mansour and Luana Lopes Lara at MIT in 2018. The two founders chose a difficult but compliant path and played with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) for a long time, eventually becoming the first predictive market platform to obtain regulatory approval from the CFTC.
Kalshi opened up the US market in 2021, providing contracts for various types of events such as political elections, economic indicators, and sporting events. In 2024, a lawsuit was passed to qualify for the launch of the US presidential election contract, filling the compliance gap.
03 The Clearing Company, @theclearingco
The Clearing Company is a prediction market launched by Kalshi and the former team of Polymarket. CEO Toni Gemayel, who has received $15 million in financing, has successively served as the platform growth leader for Kalshi and Polymarket.
Currently, the platform is still in the preparation and development stage. The team is paying great attention to simplifying the user experience. They hope that the new product will be as simple for ordinary users as using Robinhood or Coinbase, and also emphasizes design compliant products. Judging from the concept, this type of product is trying to find a compromise on both ends, not only to deviate from regulatory requirements, but also to lower the threshold for user understanding, but it remains to be seen whether it can actually establish an effective market ecosystem.
04 Limitless, @trylimitless
Limitless is a high-frequency prediction market that provides short-term price prediction contracts from minute to day, with a total financing of about 7 million US dollars. It was invested by well-known crypto funds 1Confirmation and Coinbase Ventures, and founded by CJ Hetherington and others in 2023.
Limitless was officially launched on the Base main network in May 2025, then expanded to two layers such as Arbitrum. The product format is closer to traditional contract exchanges. Users can bet on “Yes/No” in the short-term price market, set the expiration time, and determine the results by on-chain oracles during settlement.
Judging from the data performance, Limitless has created a large number of ultra-short-term trading scenarios, and some users use quick and clear results for short-term arbitrage. However, as a result, criticism has emerged in the community: some users have pointed out that the platform has launched markets where wins and losses are determined or almost impossible, and there are no processing fees, such as the BTC price market within 1.5 hours. This kind of “famous market” is being abused by arbitrators to increase trading volume. Currently, the team responds that market generation rules have been optimized to put an end to this kind of situation.
05 Opinion, @opinionlabsxyz
Opinion Labs (O.LAB) has now received $5 million in financing, led by YZi Labs. Other investors include Echo, Animoca Ventures, Manifold Trading, and Amber Group.
In terms of current 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 an up-and-coming prediction market supported by the Variant Fund. It claims to create “Viral Markets” — allowing any topic to generate predictive markets and gain traffic through viral communication. It has now raised $3.5 million, and the investors are Variant and DAO Builders Alliance (DBA). Co-founder and CEO Max was a strategic leader at Ava Labs and also founded a short video influencer brand, and has unique opinions on community operations and business strategies.
As of now, Melee is still in the development and warm-up stage, and the product has not been officially launched. Currently, the official website only provides a waitlist registration portal. You can join a candidate by linking to an X account. According to official disclosure, the “virus market” concept advocated by Melee includes three major features: any topic can become a market, closed loop for creators to monetize, and early participation incentives. It is positioned at the intersection of social networking and predictive markets, and tries to stimulate broad participation through the UGC (User Generated Market) model.
07 Football.Fun, @footballfun
Football.Fun uses player prediction as the core mechanism to turn real-world professional player tokens into tradable “shares”. Users can hold player cards and receive points and settlement rewards through their performance in real games. Founder Adam is a member of the WolvesDAO community and has now completed a $2 million seed round. Investors include Man 6th Ventures, Zee Prime, Sfermion, etc.
08 Trepa, @trepa_io
Trepa focuses on numerical forecasting, which allows users to predict specific values such as macroeconomic indicators, and obtain varying degrees of return according to the size of the error. It has now raised approximately US$420,000, and the lead investor, Colosseum, is a fund founded by the Solana Foundation's former head of growth.
The Trepa team was founded in 2024 in Singapore, and the core members have cross-disciplinary backgrounds. Currently in the public beta phase, users can select a forecast topic (mostly macroeconomic or financial data, such as a country's inflation rate, a certain quarter's GDP growth rate, etc.), and then submit the forecast by dragging the numerical slider or entering a specific value. Unlike traditional binary markets, where there are only “right/wrong”, Trepa uses a continuous reward mechanism: the closer the predicted value is to the actual result, the higher the reward, and even if the guess is biased, you can get a partial reward.
09 Compliance risk, the biggest uncertainty on the racetrack
Looking at the above eight projects, it can be seen that the prediction market has shown clear differentiation in product design and technology implementation. But regardless of the model, the common challenge remains how regulation defines its legal nature.
The forecasting market is naturally characterized by “speculation+gambling” and is a sensitive industry in most jurisdictions. In the US, few projects such as Kalshi have obtained compliance licenses, and Polymarket is also trying to establish a legal path through acquisitions. But more projects are still in the regulatory gray area.
Furthermore, even on-chain platforms inevitably face the following risks:
Market manipulation: a small amount of capital may affect the direction of prices and disrupt the effectiveness of information
Oracle risk: Data source errors or attacks directly lead to settlement errors
Contract security: Some new platforms have not been fully audited, and there is a risk of funds being stolen
Difficulty of exit: Some markets have limited liquidity, and there is a risk of capital stranded
Based on experience, forecasting markets generally do not recommend ALL-IN heavy positions; instead, it is better to use a diversified small amount and multiple bet strategy to hedge against the uncertainty of a single market. If you really want to get involved, and newbies are also recommended to prefer platforms that are compliant and user-friendly, Polymarket is a good place to start.
In addition to this, the biggest threshold for newbies to participate is understanding trading mechanisms and the use of technology. In the prediction market, placing an order is not as intuitive as simply buying up or down; it is necessary to understand the probability represented by the odds or price. For example, the price of 0.20 means that the market thinks there is a 20% chance that an event will occur. This requires some skill in converting with traditional odds. It is recommended that you spend time reading the platform's beginner's guide or online science articles to understand the profit and loss calculation of the binary market.
10 Written at the end: Is it a tool or a speculative variant?
Predicting the market is nothing new. As early as 2000, many think tanks and economists viewed it as one of the tools for “information integration and social consensus formation.” However, the reality is that in the past 20 years, the prediction market has failed to break through on a large scale, whether in the Web2 scenario or in on-chain applications. On the one hand, the compliance threshold limits the size of its users, and on the other hand, its speculative nature makes it difficult to obtain broad support from public institutions.
The resurgence of Polymarket and Kalshi's popularity this time may be a chase for new topics in the capital cycle, or it may just be a supplement to market game tools. But in any case, it is far from being a force to “change the structure of the market.”
The real turning point of this track is not in the form of products, but at the boundaries of the system. Until a complete risk control and entry system is established, we still need to keep a calm eye.