Forecasting the market landscape: how can the new players break the game

From Polymarket, Kalshi to the new players, to Robinhod, Jupiter's forecast expansion。

By KarenZ, Foresight News

Forecasting markets, a financial instrument that uses mass wisdom to predict future events, experienced unprecedented and explosive growth in 2024-2025。

The platform-day transactions represented by Polymarket and Kalshi have been repeated at $100 million, and cumulative transactions have reached tens of billions of dollars, marking a critical turning point in predicting the movement of markets from mini-tools to mainstream financial markets。

But the undertow of prosperity. The middle-end market of the head platform and the vast majority of emerging platforms are mired in common problems of insufficient mobility; regulatory uncertainty, like the "Sword of Damocles" , remains a central risk to industry development; and the emerging platform is actively exploring differential shortcuts in intense competition. Based on this, a comprehensive inventory and analysis of the core platform of the Web3 market forecast will be undertaken。

Head platform: dual oligarchy pattern

Polymarket

Organisation: Polygon

Do you have a tokenThere is no original currency, but according to the sources quoted by Decrypt, Polymark is planning to issue encrypted tokens after re-entry into the United States market, but it may not be implemented until 2026。

Market size:By mid-October, Polymarket had a cumulative trade-off of $20 billion, a daily transaction of tens of millions of dollars or even hundreds of millions, and a total of 1.4 million users. Since this year, Polymarket's market share has been hit, chased by Kalshi and even exceeded。

Core characteristics:

• There is no need for KYC to support the use of multiple tokens in multiple networks such as Bitcoin, Ethera, Solana and bank cards and PayPal deposits。
• ONLY USDC SETTLES THROUGH SMART CONTRACTS。
• Adopt order book model。
• Polymarket doesn't charge transaction costs。
• Markets are rich in variety, ranked according to current silo positions, dominated by political, encrypted currency blocks, and other popular sectors are sports, Tramp, culture, economy。
• Could not close temporary folder: %s The newly launched 15 Minute Encrypted Assets Up / Down Forecast Market is supported by Chainlink Prophecies。
• PROVIDING USDC MOBILITY INCENTIVES AND HOLDING INCENTIVES。
• Relatively sufficient liquidity is currently one of the largest decentrized forecast markets for transactions。
• The large user base and market activity make it easier to promote information discovery and truth transactions。

Key developments in the last six months:

• In June, Polymarket predicted market integration。
• In July, the United States Department of Justice concluded its investigation of Polymarket. Later, Polymarket, citing multiple sources, paid $112 million to buy a small exchange, QCX, to return to the United States market。
• In August, Polymarket received tens of millions of dollars in venture capital funds from Donald Trump Jr., the eldest son of Trump. Donald Trump Jr. will also join the Polymarket Advisory Board。
• In September, Polymarket was approved by CFTC to go online in the United States。
• Early in October, the New York Stock Exchange parent company, the Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), made a strategic investment of $2 billion to Polymark, valued at $9 billion. In the meantime, Polymarket CEO Shayne Coplan also disclosed two previously undeclared financings — $150 million from Founders Fund earlier this year and $55 million from Blockchain Capital before last year’s election。
• By mid-October, the cumulative turnover of Polymarket had exceeded $20 billion。

Insufficient:

• Access to users in the United States had been restricted for regulatory reasons earlier, but was about to reopen to users in the United States。
• RELIANCE ON THE UMA AGREEMENT FOR DISPUTE RESOLUTION MAY INCLUDE, FOR EXAMPLE, DELAYS IN THE VALIDATION OF RESULTS。
• The market depth in the middle tail is insufficient, which is the common denominator of the industry。

Kalshi

Kalshi is a contract exchange for events regulated by the United States Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), the market where users trade the results of real world events. Since 2025, Kalshi has grown more than Polymarket。

Do you have a tokenNone

Market size:As at 19 October, Kalshi ' s unsettled position amounted to $250 million, higher than Polymark ($2.15), with a cumulative nominal trade of $12.2 billion。

Characteristics:

• COMPLIANCE, MANDATORY KYC, CURRENTLY OPEN TO UNITED STATES USERS ONLY。
• Support for debit cards, Wire, bank transfers, and the use of currencies filled with USDC and SOL in Ithera, Solana, Base, Arbitrum and Optimism。
• Enter in French dollars (if charged in encrypted currency, converted from Zero Hash to legal currency)。
• Adopt order book model。
• Provide mobility and turnover incentive schemes。
• AN INTEREST RATE ACCUMULATION SCHEME HAS BEEN INTRODUCED FOR CASH AND OPEN POSITIONS, WITH THE CURRENT API SET AT 3.75 PER CENT. THE RATE IS FLOATING AND MAY BE ADJUSTED AT ANY TIME。
• Dynamic cost mechanisms, to be specified。
• In mid-October, Kalshi, in collaboration with the prophecy project Pyth Network, linked real-time, regulated forecast market data。
• Markets are rich in variety, organized according to current silo positions, sports, political dominance and other popular versions of the economy, encryption, entertainment and elections。

Insufficient:

• U.S. COMPLIANCE IS AN ADVANTAGE, BUT IT ALSO MEANS THAT FLEXIBILITY IS LIMITED, E.G. KYC REQUIREMENTS (BOTH POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE) AND GEOGRAPHICAL LIMITATIONS。
• Certain types of markets cannot be opened under regulatory restrictions。
• The Platform charges transaction costs。
• Community users responded that the price differential was high。
• The middle and tail markets lacked depth, although this was a painful point for all forecast markets。

Important developments in the last six months

• In May 2025, Kalshi Inc. engaged Donald Trump Jr. as his strategic adviser and is working with Mask under the banner of XAI。
• In June 2025, Kalshi completed $185 million in financing with a $2 billion valuation, with Paradigm taking the lead。
• In June 2025, the United States online investment platform, Webull, launched an hourly contract transaction in encrypted currency to diaspora investors through Kalshi。
• In July 2025, XAI will integrate its Grok dialogue model into the forecast market, Kalshi。
• Early in October, 2025 Kalshi Encrypted Currency Manager John Wang indicated that Kalshi, the predictive market platform, would land "each large encrypted currency application and exchange" within the next 12 months。
• In October 2025, Kalshi completed $300 million in financing, valued at $5 billion. In addition, the company plans to announce that it will begin to accept investments from clients in more than 140 countries。

Emerging forecast markets

Accessed main web / Alpha/ inline:

Limited:

Limited is a decentrized forecast market platform built on the Base network, the largest forecast market in the Base ecology, which will be extended to BNB Chain in October 2025。

Market size:As of mid-October, the cumulative turnover of Limited was $511 million, far less than Polymark and Kalshi, but it was at the top of the emerging forecast market。

Dictionary: Limitless, LMTS has been online on October 22, and is currently $FDV 300 million. In the area of token economics, the total supply was 1 billion, of which 25 per cent was allocated to investors, 1.37 per cent to the Kaito pre-sale, 1.26 per cent to the Echo wheel, 25 per cent to the team, 24.37 per cent to the ecosystem incentive (air drop and incentive) (all first-season TGE unlocked), and 10 per cent to the treasury and liquidity。

Currency effects:

• Pledged tokens can be unlocked at a discount。
• The challenges, rewards and incentives for the direct integration of coins on the platform。
• A portion of the cost of the platform will be used to repurchase tokens。

The previous two days, on 22 October 2025, the Limitedes issued currency, completed $10 million in seed-wheel financing, a concession, totalling $18 million。

Characteristics:

• Supports filling through Coinbase or Base Network USDC。
• Adopt order book model。
• Focusing on encrypted currency and stock price forecasting, providing market forecasts every 30 minutes, hourly and daily, weekly。
• Unique trading mechanisms: Supporting splits and merges, US$ 1 can be split into 1 "yes" and 1 "no" shares, which in turn can be combined to bring back US$ 1 to provide traders with a seamless buy-in/sale experience of cross-Yes/No assets and high transaction flexibility。
• Negrisk Classification Market: A special multi-outcome forecast market with only one outcome to win, all results of "no" contracts linked, supporting the shift of "no" shares to "yes" shares of other outcomes, and bringing about a rapid shift in prices。
• Most markets are analyzed by Pyth Network。
• On the cost side: For the AMM market, a fixed fee of 0.25 per cent is charged for all transactions. In the order book market, only Tuckers are charged fees ranging from 0.03 per cent to 3 per cent, with lower costs being paid at low risk and higher costs being paid at high returns。
• INCENTIVES: LP INCENTIVES, SCORE SYSTEMS (FUTURE AIRDROPS)。

Insufficient / Risk:

• Liquidity versus market risk。
• The functional complexity is high: mechanisms such as splits/mergers, shifts in shares in the Negrisk market have some learning costs for start-up users and need to understand bottom logic to be used efficiently。
• Regulatory uncertainty。

Open

Opinion is one of the selected projects for the 7th season of Yzi Labs' MVB accelerator program in 2024 and subsequently received Yzi Labs' investment. In March 2025, Opinion Labs announced the completion of $5 million in seed ship financing, with Yzi Labs leading the investment, and other investors including Angel Investment Community Echo, Animoca Ventures, Manfred Trading, Amber Group, etc。

Opinion is currently in an internal monitoring phase and requires an invitation code for access. In mid-October, the Open Labs announced the official launch of the new brand of "Opinion", which will focus its first phase on the theme of "Macroeconomic Forecasting Infrastructure" based on the preservation of the general forecast market for news, sports, etc., with users trading local indicators such as CPI, interest rates, and employment to hedge against macroeconomic risks。

On October 23rd, Opinion is on line with BNB Chain and will launch the OPN Trade Score System to build BNB Chain's first macroeconomic and integrated forecast market. At the same time, Opinion will open the AI-driven, non-licensed market creation and prophecies functions behind the main network and will work to construct macroeconomic forecasting ecology in conjunction with its AI Prophecies, Forecasting Markets and Liquidity Infrastructure, Opinion Metapool, Open Production。

Melee

Melee is a Solana ecological forecast market, completing $3.5 million Pre-Seed Round Finance, Variant, DBA etc. in September 2025. On October 21, Melee went online with the Alpha version。

Characteristics:

• Melee claims to be a combination of Pumpfun and Polymarket, and anyone can create a forecast market for any event。
• Melee also supports users who, through the Melee All function, pledge overall market growth and can invest in all market outcomes。
• The creator can also benefit from the audience。
• Unlike most forecast markets, Melee ' s outcome pricing follows the conglomerate curve, which allows speculators to benefit from early and accurate predictions。

PMX

PMX was preceded by Polymarket Telegraph Trading Robot Polycule, a recent development driven by Meteora Solana without permission to forecast the market launchpad. The Polycule team received $5.6 million in investment from alliance DAO. The token PPULE has been renamed PMX with a current market value of $16 million。

Characteristics:

• Anyone can create a forecast market, similar to issuing tokens on a contours, but using a pre-sale model and requiring a fundraising target (from $1,000 to $20,000) and clear market resolution criteria。
• PMX TRANSLATES EACH FORECAST MARKET INTO TWO TOKENS: "YES" AND "NO" COINS ARE FORGED AND ADDED TO THE MOBILITY POOL. BY REBALANCING THE PRICE THROUGH ARBITRAGE WALLETS, THE TOTAL PRICE OF THE TWO TOKENS WAS $1。
• Using the AMM model (in cooperation with Meteora), anyone can provide mobility。
• PMX predicts that the market can be traded in Solana's main DEX (including Raydium, Orca, Meteora, etc.)。
• ON THE COST SIDE, EACH TRANSACTION INCURS 1% OF THE COST, 40% OF WHICH IS ALLOCATED PRO RATA TO LP, 10% TO MARKET CREATORS AND 50% TO PMX。
• MARKET SOLUTIONS ARE CURRENTLY BEING IMPLEMENTED INTERNALLY AND ARE THEN AUTOMATED THROUGH AI AGENTS。

Manifold

Manifold is a social forecast market that makes predictions interesting and easy to participate by playing. In March, Manifold announced his plan to issue an MYR token, which will also be adopted by Decrypt, Rug Radio, Lucky Trader and DegenzNFT。

Characteristics:

• The forecast market can be created free of charge by anyone。
• Manifold uses a combination of a price limit list and an automatic market. Transactions are entered into first on the basis of a price limit list and then on the basis of automatic commercial transactions。
• The platform uses Mana (Ṁ) virtual / game coins for users to bet on the market, and Mana can be obtained through proper forecasting, successful trading, the creation of popular markets, the completion of tasks, the referral of friends or the completion of rewards, but it cannot be delivered, potentially reducing the incentive for some users to participate. New users receive 1,000 M start-up funds free of charge。
• Myriad Protocol is built on EigenClaud。

Insufficient:

• Failure to do so reduces the incentive for some users to participate。
• By relying on the integrity of the creator, market solutions are determined by the creator (in exceptional cases, the team of administrators will overturn the problem already resolved), and while giving the creator considerable autonomy, there may be a risk of subjective judgement and potential dispute。
• Mobility issues。

Projects not online but of concern

The Clearing Company

The Clearing Company is a forecast market created by former members of the Clearing Company, chained, without permission and regulated, and will support a forecast market for transactions, political, sports, culture, etc。

The Clearing Company founder and CEO Toni Gemayel served in Polymarket, Kalshi and Figma. According to the official network, in addition to the CEO, the company had at least four engineering and product teams from Polymarket。

The Clearing Company completed its $15 million seed ship finance in August 2025, with the Union Square Ventures leading the vote, the Haun Ventures, Variant, Coinbase Ventures, etc。

pvpfun

The smart infrastructure pvpfun is about to launch AI driver predictions on the Mantle Network. Dapp "FUN Predict", which combines high-volume and modular design to achieve real-time settlement and scalable market creation. The FUN Predict will be built on the Vibe Coding AI framework of Pvpfun, enabling anyone to create programmable and evolving social finance products。

According to the official Profile, the team behind the pvpfun is Gametaverse, supported by OkX Ventures, Animoca Brands, Dragonfly, etc。

Overtime

Overtime ex-powering agreement Thales, then transformed into a sports forecasting market。

Which companies/projects are expanding forecast market operations

Robinwood

Robinhood announced in March this year a collaboration with Kalshi to launch a forecast market centre. Robinhood, through Kalshiex LLC, provided the contract for the forecast of events in the market for professional and university football, which went online in August, and over 100 new forecast market contracts (including customs, federal policy, spending cuts, etc.) which were added in October。

During this year ' s Token 2049 summit, Robinwood CEO Vlad Tenev, in an interview with Bloomberg, stated that the forecast market had great potential and had become one of nine major lines of business with annual revenues exceeding $100 million。

Jupiter

The forecast market test was launched in October 2025 and Kalshi provides liquidity。

MetaMask

On October 14, MetaMask announced that it was about to integrate the Polymarket forecast market in its wallet。

Bitget Wallet

Bitget Wallet announced the integration of the Limiteds forecast market on October 23rd。

World

In May 2025, Sam Altman, a co-founder of World, launched a forecast market to support direct participation from World App through Kalshi Mini App. In October, Polymarket Mini App was also online in World。

Rabby

Web3 Wallet Rabby announced on October 22 that Pollymarket would be integrated in the wallet。

Drift Protocol

Drift Protocol launched the Forecast Market BET in August 2024, but in recent months there has been no official updating and promotion and no active forecast market on the Official Forecasting Platform。

Forecast market polymer

TradeFox

TradeFox, a forecast market polymer and broker supported by Allance DAO and CMT Digital, is fully integrated into Polymarket, which is about to be integrated into the forecast markets of Kalshi, Limites and Myriad。

Characteristics:The Polymarket primary interface is supplemented by an advanced filter that helps to screen markets better and supports the type of advanced orders (specialized tools such as tracking, auto-stopping, etc.)。

Web3 Old Forecasting Platform

August

Augur officially went online in July 2018, but three years earlier it had been financed over $5 million through ICO. In November 2021 to March 2025, no movement was announced, in March 2025, and it was stated that the Lituus Foundation was revitalizing August and exploring a new direction: separating the prophecy from the bottom forecast market, making it a modular and neutral source of truth — access to any forecast market, price information, DAO, games, insurance agreements, etc。

At the same time, August's prophecies will have cross-chain features and queries can come from any chain that supports cross-chain messaging. The analysis and settlement will remain on the Ether Layer-1, thereby preserving the economic integrity of the prophecy。

Extension reading:YesCold Knowledge: The first DApp in the Ether is to predict the marketIt's not like that

Azuro

Azuro claims to be a decentrization agreement for predicting markets, leading sports forecasting, providing tools and infrastructure for the EVM chain. Part of the forecast market is based on its construction。

Summary

Web3 predicts that markets are at a very high stage of development, that the head platform is in a solid pattern of "two males" and that new platforms and the entry of cross-border players are further enriching the predictive markets。

With clear regulation and ecological integration, markets are expected to add value in areas such as financial information convergence, risk hedging, etc. It is, however, a matter of caution that users should have a rational view of the core value of predicting markets, risk management and rational assessment of the probability of events。