Q: "Is there any room for prediction markets beyond Polymarket / Kalshi?"
No one:
Base: "Yes."
^ This is something to pay attention to.
Prediction markets are one of the most exciting primitives to hit the internet in the last decade. So far, incumbents like Robinhood, DraftKings, Coinbase, CNN, etc etc etc are choosing to integrate prediction market leaders Polymarket and Kalshi, rather than innovating to something different internally or inviting builders to innovate.
Base's bet is that providing space for novel prediction market products at the protocol and GTM level can will create the next big things in the space.
That's what makes what's happening on Base super interesting – it has a chance to be "contrarian but right" about the future of human interaction with information.
The question of who wins is probably not "disruptive" in my opinion – Polymarket isn't going anywhere. It's fantastic. I think of it as a "News 3.0", ie, a synthesis of News 1.0 (credible) and News 2.0 (crowd-sourced), taking the benefits of both without their drawbacks. And it provides something fun to do for more active participants as well.
What I'm more interested in as a founder is whether Polymarket will be more like Google was with search or more like Facebook was with social media.
Ie, both Google and Facebook spearheaded the development of powerful new primitives. But with Google search, the clean primitive approach dominated all competitors. People did not want or need variety of experience. Whereas with Facebook social, a variety of different product experiences also became extremely compelling and relevant – Insta for photo-based social, Snap for selfie; Twitter for takes; etc.
I'm betting my time, money and effort that Polymarket is more like Facebook – that there is plenty of room for other absolutely massive prediction market products, if we figure out the unique versions versions of them that resonate as human experiences.
What I'm building on Base -
@BrackyHQ - is uniquely developed for the sports case. It's based on our team's deep understanding of two things:
(1) Current prediction markets are not meaningfully differentiated from existing sports gambling products like DraftKings (which is quite good at what it does) beyond being marginally more legal, and open to a small number of banned whales. [Both advantages, but limited in scope and time]
(2) More importantly: DraftKings is already an impoverished experience of sports – it takes one of the most social things on earth, and makes it hugely single-player and lonely. This just ain't it.
Our approach is that the future of sports betting apps is not an app at all – it's headless agent that brings sports experiences to whichever social space you are already in. It's not single player and lonely, it's multiplayer and social. That's Bracky, who already became the most used agent on Farcaster of any kind while competing agains Polymarket's in-feed predictions, which struggled to gain meaningful usage there across many months of actively trying.
Other markets are making other bets on Base – the most exciting to me being
@context, which let's people spin up and settle prediction markets about anything by using AI.
It's invigorating to build prediction markets on
@base because they are making the optimistic, contrarian bet that the innovation in prediction markets is far from finished... and that we can extend it.
It's going to be fun to be right.