Prediction markets are on a roll. The combination of decentralization, enabling permissionless access, and transparency to ensure fairness – coupled with smart contracts that automate payouts – has meant that prediction markets have found real product-market fit. They proved their colors in the 2024 U.S. elections, becoming one of the leading – and most accurate – sources of polling data.
Many crypto natives already knew how good prediction markets were, of course, having long been using them to venture on sports events, token prices, politics, and various global events. Market leader Polymarket has seen its valuation raised to $100B and it’s not the only prediction market that’s attracting VC interest, as you’ll discover.
If you’ve yet to test the waters and try an onchain prediction market for yourself, now’s the time. The latest entrants are more social, user-friendly, and accessible than ever. In addition to allowing binary bets to be placed on real-world events, they support crypto predictions, making them effectively double as futures exchanges. And with the potential for one or more of these platforms to airdrop a token in future, there are ample incentives to start playing around with the following five prediction markets.
Myriad
Myriad embodies everything that’s great about the new class of prediction markets to have entered the arena. It’s clean, slick, and very easy to master. Even web3 beginners should have no trouble figuring out where to get started – and once started, there’s a wealth of markets to trade.
Having processed more than $11M in volume to date from almost 400,000 users, Myriad is gathering pace. One of the reasons why it’s thriving isn’t just the UX and market diversity, supporting everything from Donald Trump’s travel plans to OpenSea’s token launch: it’s also the novelty of the mechanics underpinning it all. Myriad supports binary, categorical, and scalar contracts using an AMM bonding-curve model. As a result, Myriad looks like a dream and works like one too.
Polymarket
Polymarket is of course the one that started it all. It wasn’t the first prediction market, but it’s the biggest by far and arguably the only one whose recognition extends beyond the cryptosphere. What can be said about Polymarket that hasn’t already been said? We’ve already touched upon the $100B valuation, and should add that recent SEC filings suggest they may be contemplating a token, but in the here and now, Polymarket continues to innovate.
Since sealing its reputation in the 2024 Presidential election, where users who backed Trump outperformed most legacy media pundits, Polymarket has not just been on the map but at the very center of it. With total trading volume that’s approaching $1B, Polymarket is a giant, not just in prediction markets but in web3 at large. In June, it partnered with X to integrate prediction data into Grok, while Polymarket’s move towards compliance should help to court institutional users to complement the retail market it’s already cornered.
Kalshi
Kalshi’s prediction market for “trading the future” has several things working in its favor, not least the fact that it’s CFTC approved, allowing it to operate in 50 U.S. states. The markets it offers are very U.S-centric and mainstream focused. So if you want to bet on when the next Jimmy Kimmel show will air or the Fed’s next interest rate decision, Kalshi is where it’s at.
Having raised more than $260M from VCs including Sequoia Capital, Paradigm, and Y Combinator, Kalshi has the funds to realize its full potential and the $1B valuation to boot. Because it’s taken a compliant approach from day one, Kalshi looks poised to prosper in the U.S. especially, where it’s likely to be favored by institutions seeking exposure to blockchain prediction markets and the earning opportunities they present in terms of trading, staking, and liquidity provision.
PredX
PredX is a smaller prediction market but one that’s rapidly carving out its own niche. That niche involves letting users trade based on the impact of tweets posted by KOLs – that’s right, influencers. It’s a clever concept that both incentivizes KOLs to share quality coin picks and encourages users to keep tabs on who’s consistently sharing winners. PredX’s market enables real-time monitoring of tweets, adding an economic layer to social media.
The broad goal underpinning PredX is to transform influence into value by putting a market value on KOLs and their token picks. Each tweet is displayed in the PredX dashboard, allowing users to place a bet on the likelihood of their prediction coming to pass. One of the cool things about PredX is that it groups predictions into categories, so if lots of X influencers are making predictions about the Jimmy Kimmel Show or the $WORTHLESS token, they’ll be grouped together. PredX is the incentive layer X has been waiting for.
Hedgehog.markets
“Bet on anything” is the no-nonsense mantra of Hedgehog, which gets straight to the point. The Solana-focused project provides a simple dashboard that displays the latest markets seeing action, with a good split between crypto and real-world events. Popular markets on Hedgehog at present include BTC’s price level in 2025 and the likelihood of Polymarket deploying on Solana – which means you can now participate in prediction markets about prediction markets. Meta.
Retail-oriented and plugged into the degen side of Solana – which is most of Solana – Hedgehog has a real community vibe to it. Getting started is as simple as connecting your wallet and then placing your bet. While total volume is still low compared to that of the more established prediction markets, Hedgehog is getting up to speed. Like PredX, it’s found its niche by giving Solana traders a fresh way to bet on market prices, sports events, and political happenings.
It’s all so predictable
You don’t need a prediction market to predict that prediction markets are going to undergo parabolic growth in the coming year, both in terms of unique users and volume. Their universality makes them ideal for gaining synthetic exposure to a broad array of assets and events. You can profit from BTC, for example, without needing to hold BTC, or on the price of gold without needing to directly trade it.
Arguably, no other on-chain vertical straddles web3 and web2 as effectively, providing mainstream users with a compelling reason to take the plunge and start their on-chain journey. Even if you don’t care about crypto, you likely care about the Oscars or the mid-term elections or the Lakers game. That’s the bull case for prediction markets: they’re simple to understand and easy to use. For millions of forthcoming crypto users, prediction markets will be where their web3 journey begins.
