Vega Protocol Launches Its Own Prediction Market to Emulate Polymarket's Success

Cosmos-based decentralized exchange Vega Protocol is seeking to emulate Polymarket's success by launching its own prediction market as part of its latest upgrade.

Cosmos-based decentralized exchange Vega Protocol is adding a prediction market to its platform in its latest upgrade, aiming to capitalize on the growing interest in crypto betting.

The platform will allow users to create and trade markets on any event, ranging from the upcoming U.S. presidential election to the price of Bitcoin next week. Markets can be settled in any fully decentralized stablecoin, including DAI, USDC, and FRAX.

The new platform is designed to be more flexible than existing prediction markets, such as Polymarket, which has a fully built-out platform. On Vega, users can create markets with any parameters they choose, including the event being predicted, the settlement date, the minimum and maximum bet sizes, and the binary (0 or 100) or non-binary (any value between 0 and 100) settlement.

The platform will also feature live game scoring for real-time updates on the markets, and additional cross-chain capabilities will be enabled in the coming weeks.

"The launch of prediction markets on Vega is a significant step in our evolution,” said Barney Mannerings, co-founder of Vega Protocol, in a statement shared with The Defiant. "While platforms like Polymarket have shown the appetite for prediction markets, Vega offers a fully decentralized, permissionless alternative. The only limit is our imagination!"

VEGA Price Surges 35%

Vega’s native token, VEGA, rallied 35% on the news to $0.19. The team will be hoping that the launch of the prediction markets will pique investors’ interest in the protocol, which has seen its market cap dwindle by 66% to $12 million from $36 million in early May.

Bettors that have been flocking to Polygon-based Polymarket are now seeing similar platforms pop up across the ecosystem, indicating that crypto-focused gambling has found product-market fit.

Crypto's Prediction Market Surges to Record Highs

The crypto sphere’s most popular prediction market more than tripled its monthly volume in July to $387 million from $111 million in June. Monthly active users also soared, with a 50% uptick to 65,013 bettors in the past thirty days.

Polymarket’s popularity is also a testament to how accurate these markets have become. Users are increasingly looking to prediction markets to gauge sentiment, especially in politics, as the U.S. presidential race between Donald Trump and Kamala Vice President Kamala Harris continues to heat up.

For the first time ever, Harris has now inched ahead of Trump in terms of who will be elected in the upcoming November elections.

Vega, a perpetual futures platform that allows users to bet on the future value of digital assets, unveiled its Colosseo II upgrade less than a month after its Colosseo I release. The first upgrade, which took place on July 16, added spot markets, an Arbitrum bridge for settling markets in Arbitrum-based assets, and cross-chain deposits via Axelar.