Recently, the popular prediction market Polymarket has once again attracted great attention from the crypto community. It is understood that some users expect the platform to launch the token next year, and a significant number of traders are already trying to win the potential airdrop. The reason for this idea is that PolyMarket currently does not charge transaction fees or subscription fees, and after the US election, a new round of growth and expansion may depend on token issuance. According to Fhantom Bets, the trading volume of the Polymarket website has increased after the Series B financing. Although the currency issuance rumors have not yet been officially confirmed or the estimated time has been announced, it speculates that the token release is likely to occur after the US election.
In view of this, the next focus of market attention may shift to other platforms on the prediction market track. Odaily Planet Daily will briefly review and analyze this in this article.
Overview of the prediction market track: TVL doubled its growth in two months
On July 10, according to DefiLlama data, the TVL of the prediction market sector was $77.42 million, once reaching a record high. Among them, Polymarket topped the list with TVL of US$47.69 million, and other protocol platforms with TVL exceeding US$1 million include Azuro, Gnosis Protocol V1, Lumi Finance, Augur, EtherFlip, and WINR Protocol.
Today, 2 months later, according to information on the DefiLlama website, the prediction market segment TVL has exceeded 146 million US dollars. In addition to Polymarket, which has always grown rapidly (TVL has achieved nearly 3 times growth, reaching 121 million US dollars), other companies including Azuro Platforms or protocols also have varying degrees of growth.
Source: Defilama website information
A closer look at the rapid growth of the prediction market sector may be mainly attributed to the following points:
The number of prediction events increased. As the second debate of the US presidential election approaches (Odaily Planet Daily Note: This Tuesday, that is, tomorrow, Trump and Harris will have a general election debate. This is also the first debate between Harris and Trump after Biden withdrew from the candidacy of the Democratic presidential candidate. ’s first confrontation), the prediction market platform has become increasingly active.
Cryptocurrency markets are weak. The recent unsatisfactory performance of the cryptocurrency market may also be a major reason for the growth of forecast market trading volume and TVL. After all, when mainstream tokens such as Bitcoin and Ethereum spend more time down than up, compared to the "gambling style" of high-multiple contracts "Game", perhaps more similar to "binary options", "buy big or small", "win or lose" prediction market is the market transaction preferred by cryptocurrency stablecoin holders.
Celebrity organization platform support. In addition to the investment from Ethereum co-founder Vitalik, PolyMarket CEO Shane Coplan recently announced that "Bloomberg terminal has integrated the prediction market Polymarket." Furthermore, he noted: “What was once just a fringe science fiction idea that changed the flow of information has become the new normal as tens of millions of people have become accustomed to relying on Polymarket forecasts as a source of facts to understand what is happening in the world.”
Traditional forecasting channels fail. Take betting activities related to the U.S. presidential election as an example. Traditional prediction channels such as political commentators and opinion polls have experienced a series of dazzling events such as Trump’s conviction, Trump’s assassination, Biden’s withdrawal from the election, and Harris becoming the new candidate of the Democratic Party. The setbacks exposed shortcomings such as poor timeliness, small sample data volume, and vague prediction result standards. In comparison, the encrypted prediction market with "real money betting plus" is more sensitive, representative, and the results are certain. Sexual and other advantages, thus becoming the preferred choice of more and more people.
In terms of "taking betting as a news trend", the crypto prediction market undoubtedly occupies a favorable position.
As a result, PolyMarket is at the forefront, and other prediction market protocol platforms are not far behind.
An inventory of the 5 major crypto prediction markets: each has its own advantages and disadvantages, and each is good at winning.
Due to space limitations, we only give a brief introduction to certain representative crypto prediction market projects currently on the market for the reference of readers and related users.
Azuro: A betting protocol powered by liquidity pools
As a betting protocol supported by liquidity pools, the difference between Azuro and PolyMarket is that the former is a basic protocol for creating on-chain prediction markets, including on-chain smart contracts and web components. Users can create multiple predictions based on Azure Market DApp; the latter is more like a fully functional front-end platform.
According to Dune data, the prediction market transaction volume currently supported by the Azuro protocol has reached 204 million US dollars, the number of transactions has reached 5.814 million, and the number of users has reached 30,900. In addition, according to the official Dune data panel, the total TVL of the Azure protocol reaches US$9.132 million, and the total number of applications is 34.
In addition, Azuro has issued token $AZUR. According to Coingecko data, $AZUR is currently priced at around US$0.086, with a market value of US$13.11 million, which has fallen by more than 60% compared to the high price of US$0.2396 2 months ago.
It is worth mentioning that Azuro, which bills itself as the "blockchain prediction layer", announced in April this year that it had completed US$3.5 million in financing from SevenX Ventures, Fenbushi Capital, Arrington Capital, Polymorphic Capital, Red Beard Ventures, Dewhales and G1 Ventures, etc. Participate in investment.
Source: AZUR Token Information Interface
BET: Solana ecological platform launched by Drift
In mid-August, according to official news, Drift Protocol announced the launch of the prediction market B.E.T on Solana. The first prediction market revolves around the US election. Further market categories will be launched in the future, covering sports (F1, CryptoFightNight), cryptocurrency and culture (Solana debate results). In the introductory article, the opening title is "Why be (B)ullish on (E)very(T)hing on Drift? (Why are you optimistic about everything on Drift?)", and also played a trick of "English acronym" .
Shortly after its launch, Solana Floor revealed that the platform attracted $3 million in liquidity.
According to Dune data, the total transaction volume of the platform currently exceeds US$24.78 million, the total number of transactions reaches 6,872, and the total number of users is 1,027. There is still a certain gap compared with the industry leaders. However, considering that the current open version is The Alpha version is therefore mainly focused on political betting activities, and its future potential is still worth looking forward to.
Image source: BET platform Alpha version page
SX Bet: A betting platform focusing on the sports industry
The platform was founded in 2019 and is built on the Ethereum ecosystem. According to the introduction of its official account @SX_Bet, it is "the largest sports betting platform in the world", mainly focusing on major events such as tennis, football, baseball and basketball. The final winner bets. Recently, Crypto, Degen Crypto and politics have been added to its betting section. The bets revolve around the price trends of mainstream Crypto assets and on-chain meme coins, as well as the winner of the US election and other related topics. It is understood that the project is supported by investment institutions such as Nascent, Hack VC, and CMCC Global.
Different from prediction markets such as PolyMarket, SX Bet is more like traditional sports betting. It only supports single bets and cannot freely trade bets before the outcome of the predicted event is determined. Therefore, it is impossible to exit in the middle of the betting activity like PolyMarket. Lock in profits in advance.
The innovation of this platform is that it implements a combined betting system for the first time, that is, users make predictions about a series of events, and only when all predictions are correct can they get a larger prize pool. To a certain extent, they can Considered a "leveraged prediction market".
In addition, according to its official website, its payment channels support traditional payment tools and Crypto deposit methods, which are relatively user-friendly. According to on-chain information, the current price of the SX Bet platform token $SX is around US$0.055, and the market value on the chain is around US$7.48 million.
Image source: SX Bet official website interface
Augur: The failed prediction market project
Compared with Polymarket, which is still active in the market today, Augur is undoubtedly a "negative example" - although Polygon has supported the project through a US$1 million incentive plan in 2021, as a prediction platform, there is no more liquidity If it is introduced, then the only thing waiting for it is "slow death."
The last post of its official account @AugurProject was on November 18, 2021. At that time, the project announced that it would introduce AugurDAO, cooperate with DXdao, a decentralized autonomous organization that manages the prediction market Omen, and use the DXdao structure to build AugurDAO , governance will be driven by REP v2 holders, but the final result is naturally unsatisfactory.
The project token $REP is currently close to zero, after Upbit officially delisted Augur ($REP) on July 13, 2023.
Source: CoinGeckoREP token related market information
Swaye: Permissionless marketplace creation and social integration incentives
Although Polymarket once again attracted great attention from the market during the US election year, it has been criticized for many shortcomings. One of them is the "market creation mechanism" that still requires centralized review of the platform. In comparison, Swaye may be the option that many people are more motivated to try.
On the one hand, Swaye tries to combine prediction markets and meme coins. Early adopters can not only bet on specific results, but also have more motivation to spread because betting activities help increase LP profits and losses; on the other hand, Swaye has also completed the The integration of Farcaster's social protocol makes it easy for users to share predictions through social dynamics, thereby providing the possibility to create viral spread.
According to its official website ranking interface, despite low liquidity, the top-ranked trader achieved a return rate of over 112%. In time, perhaps meme coins will become an integral part of prediction markets.
Source: official website
Conclusion: The crypto prediction market has not yet reached its end, and the AI prediction market may become the next high ground
Recently, at the 2024 South Korea Blockchain Week event, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin said that artificial intelligence and prediction market technology can speed up the generation of community notes on social media platform X (Odaily Planet Daily Note: Community Notes is a feature of the X platform that allows the community to add context to potentially misleading posts). Vitalik pointed out that the biggest criticism of social notes is that they "do not appear fast enough," which may lead to some users being misled by inaccurate information before the notes appear. Prediction markets may be a solution to this problem.
The previously regulated prediction market platform Kalshi also recently won a CFTC lawsuit, allowing it to list U.S. election predictions. Although the platform only operates in the United States and settles transactions in ordinary U.S. dollars, this matter is enough to be regarded as a prediction market. A big plus.
Comparing the total TVL of the entire prediction market with the market size of hundreds of billions of dollars in the traditional betting market, we have reason to judge that the encrypted prediction market is far from the end, and PolyMarket is not invincible. With the development of AI in full swing now and in the near future, perhaps the AI prediction market will become the next "development highland" of the cryptocurrency industry.
[Disclaimer] There are risks in the market, so investment needs to be cautious. This article does not constitute investment advice, and users should consider whether any opinions, views or conclusions contained in this article are appropriate for their particular circumstances. Invest accordingly and do so at your own risk.
This article is reprinted with permission from: "Foresight News"
Original author: Wenser, Odaily Planet Daily
