The Prediction Market Storm

gm Bankless Nation,
Prediction markets are taking the world by storm, and not everyone is happy about that fact.

In today's essay for Premium subscribers, David lays out the three central arguments that could determine whether they mature into a durable new financial primitive or get boxed in before they reach their potential.

Thanks for being part of the Bankless Nation,
luma 🫡

Sponsor: Figure — Win $25k USDC with Democratized Prime.

There’s a storm brewing over prediction markets.

Platforms like Polymarket and Kalshi have rocketed into mainstream awareness – driven by their knife fight for mindshare, society’s broader trend toward financializing everything, and the simple fact that prediction markets are a genuinely new financial primitive that deserve exploring. 

Robinhood’s reported earnings last week confirm the growth trajectory that prediction markets are seeing. Annualized revenues from their prediction market products grew from $115M in Q3 to $435M in Q4. These numbers won’t even include the revenue from the Super Bowl and March Madness – those will be Q1 numbers. Less than a year into the product, prediction markets represent 11% of Robinhood's total revenue this quarter. 

Not everyone is happy about this, but nonetheless the incredible demand so far makes it clear: prediction markets are here to stay, and they're only getting bigger from here. 

The Incoming Fights

Not everyone is happy about this. Prediction markets have their work cut out for them to earn their spot in society – and it's not going to be an easy fight. 

Prediction markets must overcome three fundamental fights in order to maximize their potential...

📈 The Asset

• Bitmine bought another $100M batch of ETH
• Ethereum’s staking queue is at an ATH wait time of +70 days

🏛️ The Protocol

• The EF zkEVM team published an update on its ongoing security sprint
• Carl Beek proposed the inclusion of “quick slots” in the Hegota upgrade

📱 The Apps

• Aave proposed the Aave Will Win Framework to align product revenues with Aave DAO
• Alchemix published its V3 docs
• Base App axed its Farcaster-based “Talk” feed
• ENS registered on.eth, the first two-character ENS name, to serve as an onchain metadata registry
• Euler added tokenized equities as a supported collateral type
• UniswapX added trading support for BlackRock’s BUIDL

🤫 The Privacy Stack

• Web3Privacy Now published a map of the Ethereum privacy ecosystem

🐸 The Culture

• Vitalik: “The right way to make Ethereum the home for AI” and “my updated views on AI”
• The EF sponsored a researcher to work with the Security Alliance and released a Chinese translation of its website for institutions
• Bastian Aue is replacing Tomasz Stańczak as co-ED at the Ethereum Foundation
• Rome will be the site of the next Ethereum Community Hub launch

💽 The Tech

• MegaETH launched its mainnet and integrated ERC-8004
• ZKsync rolled out its ZKnomics Staking Pilot program
• Optimism is embracing ZK validity proofs via Succint
• Robinhood unveiled the public testnet of Robinhood Chain
• Scroll announced its DAO 2.0 framework
• Slice has proposed ERC-8128, a standard for signing HTTP requests with Ethereum accounts
• Solidity opened up its annual developer survey

Crypto feels cooked in 2026, and the Super Bowl proves it.

Ryan and David unpack Coinbase’s Backstreet Boys rug pull ad and what it reveals about crypto’s collapsed public narrative. Then they dig into the brutal selloff, why IBIT’s record volume hints at forced TradFi liquidation, and what Polymarket is pricing for Bitcoin under $50K.

Tune into this week’s Rollup! 👇

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