Polymarket Bets Pay Off as Memecoin Memorializes 'Dwebate'

Crypto wasn't even mentioned during Tuesday's U.S. presidential debate between former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris. But there was a parallel universe of often-ridiculous trading around the faceoff – taking place on blockchain-based prediction markets and memecoin launchpads.

In this week's issue of The Protocol, we've got the crypto angle on Tuesday's presidential debate – just as weird and ridiculous as you might imagine.

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Polymarket bettors had an extra screen to keep an eye on during Tuesday's debate. (Sam Reynolds)

GREAT DWEBATE: It was entertaining enough to tune into Tuesday night's U.S. presidential debate between former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris. But it was nearly as rollicking just monitoring the action on prediction-betting site Polymarket and all the memecoins popping up on the token launchpad Pump.fun. Over the course of the debate, the Polymarket odds clearly drifted toward the conclusion that Harris was winning the tête-à-tête. "Trump just getting destroyed," the crypto-friendly money manager and former Trump White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci wrote on X roughly 40 minutes into the face-off, attaching a Polymarket screenshot.

But there were also plenty of side bets at stake – and scads of memecoins launched including DWEBATE, DOMALA TRUMPIS, PEPEDENTIAL DEBATES and WW3, which sprung up to satirize the entire spectacle, or to document some of the more memorable zingers. (Many of the memecoin names were not remotely safe for a PG-rated blockchain tech newsletter.) Some Polymarket wagers paid off handsomely when Trump claimed – falsely, according to the Wall Street Journal – that migrants are "eating the dogs" in Springfield, Ohio. (That also sparked a few new memecoins, including EATING DOGS AND CATS.)

Anyone coming to the debate hungry for a crypto policy discussion went home hungry, for what it's worth: There wasn't a single mention of Bitcoin or digital assets. That didn't stop crypto twitterati from sounding off.

At least 12 memecoins named "Run spot run" sprung up on Pump.fun after a comment during Tuesday's debate by former President Donald Trump. (Pump.fun)

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Coinbase Layer-2 Success Shows Power of Marketing Over Cutting-Edge Tech

A recent chart from on-chain data provider Token Terminal shows the network accelerating in recent months while other layer 2s were experiencing a dropoff. (Token Terminal)

Among the rapidly growing ranks of layer-2 blockchains built atop Ethereum, the U.S. crypto exchange Coinbase's own version, Base, hardly stands out as a technological pioneer. The entire project was built and launched last year using code borrowed from another team – Optimism, with its OP Stack framework for easily spinning up new layer-2 networks.

That's partly why it's so remarkable that Base has shot to the No. 2 spot on the key industry leaderboard L2Beat, with an 18% market share of 74 active layer-2 networks. Top-ranked Arbitrum's Arbitrum One dominates with a 40% share, but Base has shot past older, competing projects from teams with hard-fought reputations for cutting-edge development, including Starknet, Polygon, even Optimism itself.

But it turns out that the race for blockchain supremacy, just as in broader industry, is reliant to a large extent on marketing savvy and an ample warchest to spend on attracting new customers – not just whoever has the best tech. And Coinbase has helped to fuel Base's growth through its own advertising campaigns and promotional events, including the recently concluded "Onchain Summer."

The question now is whether the activity is sustainable. Are the accounts bona fide users with on-chain needs, or just a flurry of tire-kicking beta testers curious to try out the various protocols built atop Base? Are they opportunistic "degen" crypto traders taking advantage of one-time promotions and quests to collect extra riches, or racking up usage in hopes of eventually collecting tokens rewards?

Click here for the full story by Ian Allison and Bradley Keoun

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Bradley Keoun is the managing editor of CoinDesk's Tech & Protocols team. He owns less than $1,000 each of several cryptocurrencies.