The Growth Path of Polymarket and Kalshi

The Zhenguan era has passed, and the Kaiyuan era is approaching.

Polymarket's trading volume for the 2024 US presidential election reached $3.68 billion, making it the largest prediction market event in history.

Since then, prediction markets have completely broken out of their niche and entered the public eye, and the sector has begun to grow at a dizzying pace.

Kalshi generated approximately $260 million in revenue in 2025 , nearly ten times the $24 million in 2024, and processed $22.88 billion in trading volume in 2025, with fees accounting for approximately 1.2% of the total trading volume.

Polymarket secured a $2 billion strategic investment from NYSE parent company ICE , boosting its valuation to $9 billion. In November 2025, it received regulatory approval from the CFTC, marking its return to the US market after a three-year hiatus.

As of March 2026, both companies are projected to have a valuation of approximately $20 billion . Both companies, taking two different paths, have ultimately reached the center of the world stage.

If we compare 25 years to the Zhenguan era of the prediction market, then 26 years will usher in an even grander Kaiyuan era. This article attempts to dissect the growth history of these two prediction markets and extract reusable growth methodologies for reference.

The Origins of the Two Giants Pattern

Prediction markets are nothing new. From the Iowa Electronic Market (IEM) and PredictIt to Augur and Gnosis in the cryptocurrency world, this field has existed for decades, but it has always been a toy for academia and a small group of speculators. What truly changed the landscape were two things happening simultaneously: the maturity of blockchain infrastructure made on-chain settlement feasible, and the relaxation of the regulatory environment brought prediction markets to the mainstream stage.

Kalshi received CFTC regulatory approval in 2020, officially becoming a regulated Designated Contract Market (DCM). What is the significance of a DCM license issued by the CFTC? Why did it become a turning point?

The CFTC (Commodity Futures Trading Commission) is the highest federal agency in the United States regulating the futures, options, and derivatives markets, holding a position equivalent to the SEC in the stock market. It reports directly to Congress and its authority covers all futures exchanges nationwide.

The DCM (Designated Contract Market) is the highest level of exchange license that the CFTC can issue. From now on, Kalshi will no longer drive a Mazda, but will sit at the same table as CME (the world's largest derivatives exchange) and ICE (the parent company of the NYSE).

Polymarket was founded in the same year, but its growth path was much more bumpy than Kalshi's. First, it was fined $1.4 million by the CFTC in 2022 and forced to withdraw from the US market. Then, after gaining fame during the US presidential election, the FBI raided the founder's home . Therefore, it was forced to take a more aggressive decentralized path, temporarily avoiding regulatory scrutiny and choosing to encircle the cities from the countryside. It was only three years later that it was able to return to the US market.

This resulted in the two companies having completely different growth trajectories.

Polymarket's promotional strategies

Polymarket's growth was achieved without traditional advertising or a large sales team, yet it experienced explosive growth after the 2024 election, with monthly active traders increasing from tens of thousands to 450,000 . The underlying logic is a carefully designed product mechanism that allows users to spread the word spontaneously.

Screenshots and reviews are considered advertisements.

This is Polymarket's most ingenious marketing design.

When a user shares a screenshot of a market's probability on Twitter, Polymarket's brand logo naturally appears, prompting curiosity and inquiries. This is no accident. Polymarket's UI is meticulously designed to ensure brand assets are prominently displayed in any screenshot size. This means that every spontaneous share represents a zero-marginal-cost brand exposure.

During the 2024 election, tens of thousands of users shared screenshots of Polymarket on platforms like X, Instagram, TikTok, and Reddit, each screenshot spreading the core narrative that "predictive markets are more accurate than polls." The scale of this passive dissemination is difficult for any paid advertising to replicate.

In October 2024, Polymarket topped the App Store's free app charts. This event itself, through numerous screenshots, triggered a new wave of viral spread.

Founder IP

Founder Shayne Coplan gives me a Musk vibe. He was only 21 when he created Polymarket . He studied computer science at New York University but dropped out during his freshman year to pursue blockchain technology and prediction markets.

In 2020, he created Polymarket alone in his apartment on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, because the bathroom was the only quiet place where he often wrote code.

His account on X: "In 2020, I was penniless and all alone, my office was my makeshift bathroom. I never imagined that Polymarket would change the world."

Starting from humble beginnings, his entrepreneurial passion never waned. Back in 2013, while still a high school student, he wrote to the SEC inquiring about the legality of creating an ECN exchange, though he never received a reply. As he said, "Overnight fame actually takes ten years." Currently, he has 160,000 followers on Twitter, but his tweets don't feature pictures of his dog, car, or team; they're simply a PR machine relentlessly promoting Polymarket.

Polymarket's Ecosystem Matrix

Polymarket has taken its reach to the next level by embedding its services into products with a massive user base through a series of collaborative integrations.

Bloomberg Terminal Integration (2024) : The integration of Polymarket data into the Bloomberg Terminal service signifies that institutional investors on Wall Street are beginning to view predicting market probabilities as a legitimate indicator of market sentiment.

MetaMask Integration (December 2025) : MetaMask is the world's most widely used Ethereum wallet, with over 30 million monthly active users. After integration, users can participate in the Polymarket prediction market and earn MetaMask Rewards without leaving their wallets. The integration uses a one-click account opening mechanism, requiring no additional KYC process.

Jupiter DEX Integration (February 2026) : Jupiter, Solana's largest decentralized exchange, announced the integration of Polymarket into its "Prediction" tab, making Polymarket natively available on Solana. Jupiter had previously attempted to launch a Kalshi-powered prediction market but ultimately chose Polymarket as a long-term partner. This marks Polymarket's expansion from Polygon into the Solana ecosystem.

World App Integration : Integrate with the World Foundation's (Sam Altman's) World App (the one that records iris scans) to reach its global authentication user base.

Official X Partnership : In mid-2025, X announced Polymarket as its official prediction market partner, combining Grok's real-time analytics capabilities to provide users with data-driven insights. With over 500 million monthly active users, this partnership effectively provides Polymarket with a distribution channel hundreds of times larger than its own user base. I suspect the connection between Polymarket and Musk began during the US presidential election, when Musk retweeted related tweets.

Compliance Transformation: Emerging from the Shadows

Polymarket's regulatory compliance journey is itself a brand upgrade strategy.

• 2022 : Fined $1.4 million by the CFTC and forced to block access for US users.
• Late 2024 : The FBI raided the home of founder Coplan to investigate whether he violated the 2022 settlement agreement.
• July 2025 : The CFTC and the U.S. Department of Justice officially announced the end of their investigation into Polymarket, with no new charges filed. That same month, Polymarket acquired the CFTC-licensed derivatives exchange QCEX for $112 million, obtaining regulatory approval.
• November 25, 2025 : The CFTC officially issued a revised Designated Contract Market (DCM) license, marking Polymarket's return to the US market.
• December 2, 2025 : Polymarket's US version officially launched. Users can trade after completing KYC. Currently, only the sports section is available, and the app's whitelist is being gradually expanded.

Looking back, Polymarket actually benefited from the misfortune. If it hadn't been forced out of the US market due to compliance issues, it might not be in a situation where its trading volume in all sectors except sports far surpasses Kalshi's. Moreover, it turned the path to compliance into a series of PR events, which were widely reported by mainstream financial media, providing free brand exposure and a repositioning upgrade.

Kalshi's promotional strategy

If Polymarket's growth is bottom-up , user-driven, then Kalshi's growth is top-down , institution-driven. Kalshi chose a regulatory compliance path from the outset and has consistently adhered to it.

Earn money while standing

Ironically, Kalshi's most important marketing campaign took place in court.

In 2023-2024, Kalshi challenged the CFTC's ban on election contracts through litigation, ultimately winning a federal appeals court ruling in 2024 and becoming the first regulated platform in the United States authorized to offer election prediction contracts. The significance of this victory lies not only in its regulatory breakthrough but also in a priceless piece of free public relations: mainstream media outlets such as the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and Politico gave it extensive coverage, bringing the prediction market into the public eye as a serious financial issue for the first time.

Kalshi firmly maintains: "We are not a gambling platform, we are an event derivatives market; we are not circumventing regulation, we are creating regulation." This narrative has earned Kalshi the trust that traditional financial institutions are willing to cooperate with.

Robinhood lends its support

This is the most strategically valuable move in Kalshi's growth history.

Robinhood is the largest retail trading app in the United States, with 27.4 million paid users. Its user profile highly overlaps with Kalshi's target audience.

Robinhood directly integrates Kalshi's sports prediction marketplace into its app, allowing users to trade without being redirected. Robinhood earns a share of the revenue, while Kalshi gains user growth.

Results data :

• During the partnership, Robinhood's prediction market business became one of its fastest-growing businesses.
• It has covered more than 1 million traders.
• Generates approximately $300 million in annualized revenue

Robinhood contributes about half of Kalshi's trading volume, and Robinhood has announced its intention to build its own prediction market exchange, which poses a potential channel dependency risk to Kalshi.

Jupiter came and went.

In October 2025, Jupiter (Solana's largest DEX with a TVL of over $3.76 billion) announced the launch of a native prediction market driven by Kalshi data and liquidity, with the first market based on the Formula 1 Mexican Grand Prix.

The strategic significance of this collaboration lies in the fact that Kalshi, as a "regulated data provider," embeds its liquidity and data into the decentralized ecosystem , gaining access to an on-chain user base while mitigating the regulatory risks of operating directly on-chain. Jupiter provides the on-chain technology layer, while Kalshi provides the compliant data layer.

It is worth noting that in February 2026, Jupiter subsequently integrated with Polymarket, indicating that leading DeFi platforms are building prediction markets as a core function, and both sides are vying for this channel.

CNN and CNBC have an exclusive partnership.

You have Bloomberg, I have CNN and CNBC; media channels have become a battleground.

CNN Partnership (December 2, 2025) : CNN becomes Kalshi's official prediction market partner, with Kalshi data gaining real-time access to CNN's television, digital, and social channels via API. CNN's Chief Data Analyst, Harry Enten, will cite Kalshi data in real-time during live coverage. Notably, CNN will not pay Kalshi any data licensing fees. This was a condition offered by Kalshi, aiming to exchange free data for maximum media exposure while establishing its authoritative position as a news source. The agreement is exclusive; CNN is prohibited from using data from other prediction market platforms.

CNBC Partnership (December 4, 2025) : CNBC, the world's largest financial media outlet, announced exclusive access to Kalshi data. Starting in 2026, CNBC will display Kalshi's market probabilities in real time on its flagship programs such as "Squawk Box" and "Fast Money," and will also scroll Kalshi-specific data quotes on the screen. CNBC will also launch a dedicated page on the Kalshi platform.

The strategic value of these two collaborations lies in upgrading Kalshi from "a platform for trading" to "a source of information for news reporting." When a reporter says, "According to Kalshi market data, the probability of a Federal Reserve rate cut is 67%," this is not advertising; this is news. This positioning as media infrastructure provides a brand endorsement that no paid advertising can achieve.

Athletes invest to enhance the sports ecosystem

NBA star Giannis Antetokounmpo has joined Kalshi as a shareholder and is involved in offline marketing activities. More importantly, Kalshi has a systematic approach to sports league licensing.

• NHL : The first North American professional sports league to sign an official partnership agreement with a prediction market platform (signing a contract with Polymarket).
• UFC : Official prediction market partner (also partnered with Polymarket)
• NFL : $300-500 billion in sports betting will be traded on the Kalshi platform; CNBC partnership will also expand to NFL coverage.

The logic behind this strategy is that sports events are the biggest traffic driver in the prediction market (Kalshi's trading volume in 2025 will exceed 90% from sports contracts). Official league authorization not only brings content legitimacy but also opens up channels for distribution to league media channels (broadcasts, official website, social media).

Different paths lead to the same destination

The two companies, whose strategies were initially very different, began to converge with each other by the end of 2025.

After completing its CFTC compliance, Polymarket began to replicate Kalshi's "media infrastructure" strategy (through a partnership with Yahoo Finance) and entered institutional channels through the ICE data distribution network. Kalshi, on the other hand, after dominating the sports market, attempted to enter the DeFi ecosystem through its Jupiter DEX integration, directly competing with Polymarket's on-chain advantages.

This strategic convergence illustrates that the two paths are not mutually exclusive choices, but rather tools that are effective at different stages of development. Establish a firm foothold, then follow the opponent's path, leaving them with no way to go.

Implications of the Prediction Market Industry

Let me state a fact first: Polymarket spent over $100 million on compliance alone (the price of acquiring QCEX), and the legal battle dragged on for three years; Kalshi's legal fees and regulatory costs are conservatively estimated at tens of millions of dollars, and the CFTC approval process took more than two years.

These are two paths that ordinary project teams simply cannot take. Therefore, the important thing is to summarize the underlying principles from them and then apply them to your own projects.

Lesson 1: Make sure users can understand the product first.

If you've used Polymarket and Kalshi, you'll find that their product designs are very simple. Even a layperson can figure out most of it after opening it, and users can master it without needing to understand prediction markets.

If you are developing a prediction market-related product, you don't need to overcomplicate things by making the features or pages too fancy. This will only affect the speed at which users place orders and increase the obstacles for users to place bets.

You only need to do two things:

1. Bring the right events to the user's attention.
2. Help users place orders more smoothly

Lesson 2: Let users spread the word for you

Both Polymarket and Kalshi have done a lot of work on their product UIs to ensure that the brand logo is clearly visible in screenshots shared by users.

Therefore, it's not enough to just make the product easy to use; you also need to fuel the user's excitement at the perfect moment. When a user wants to share, your share button should be there, along with attractive images ready for them to show off. Every share and every invitation from a user is a significant exposure opportunity for the product in its early stages.

Lesson 3: The core logic of distribution channels is leveraging existing trends.

Polymarket partnered with MetaMask because of its more than 30 million monthly active users.

Kalshi partnered with Robinhood because of its 27 million transaction users.

You provide what the other party lacks, and the other party provides what you lack in return, as a value exchange.

Where are your target users, and what products are they using? Is there a gap in that product that you can fill? By entering a larger channel with this identity, you gain not only traffic, but also their endorsement of you.

Lesson 4: Make good use of trending events

Why have Polymarket and Kalshi recently invested so much effort in promoting NCAAB ? Because 3rd Century Douglas has a solid cultural foundation in the US, and it gains significant attention during this period. Polymarket's rise to prominence due to the US election is another example of leveraging trending events for greater success.

Therefore, we need to take stock of the events that are certain to happen in the next three to six months and that will attract a lot of attention. Can the product's cold start timing be designed around these events? Can we use these events to take the product's attention to a new level? I believe that products related to the prediction market are all gearing up for the World Cup.

The show is about to begin.

The prosperity of the Kaiyuan era was due to the convergence of favorable systems, talent, and timing. The rise of Polymarket and Kalshi is similar. The fundamental conditions for their success—loosening regulations, improved infrastructure, and market demand driven by turbulent events—were all present simultaneously. Polymarket and Kalshi were simply the two fastest to capitalize on this opportunity.

Since it's a prosperous era, then a hundred flowers blooming is true spring. Besides Polymarket and Kalshi, there will definitely be other products emerging to get a share of the pie.

Polymarket and Kalshi have solved the problem of turning information into price, but a bigger question remains unanswered: what information is worth pricing? Currently, both companies are too centralized, leading to unmet forecasting needs from people in different cultures and regions. This has spurred the development of forecasting projects rooted in the Asian market, including @bagel.win.

Mass entrepreneurship and innovation—how to fully mobilize the enthusiasm of the people will determine the ceiling of this industry. As Shayne Coplan said: "Still a long way to go."