Coinbase-backed Vega Protocol Takes Aim at Polymarket With New Prediction Market

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.

The new platform’s main differentiator is its more flexible market design compared to Polymarket’s fully built-out platform. Users can also take long or short positions with potential binary (0 or 100) or non-binary (any value between 0 and 100) settlements. The platform also offers live game scoring for real-time updates and additional cross-chain capabilities.

“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’s native token, VEGA, rallied 35% on the news to $0.19. The team hopes that tapping into the popularity of prediction markets will pique investors’ interest, with the protocol’s market cap down 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, which indicates that crypto-focused gambling has found product-market fit.

Crypto’s most popular prediction market 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 Harris continues to heat up.

For the first time ever, Harris has 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.