Solana Network Launches Prediction Market

The team behind the perpetual contracts trading protocol on Solana, known as Drift, has launched the BET prediction platform.

Today, we’re launching BET on Drift — the first capital efficient prediction markets on @Solana @DriftProtocol

Here’s why, and why now:

A prediction market is not only a natural extension of trading — it’s the future of trading. Prediction markets are the natural evolution of… pic.twitter.com/az3zdLZxy0

— cindy (@cindyleowtt) August 19, 2024

According to the developers, BET (an acronym for Bullish on Everything) utilizes the Drift stack and offers features such as cross-margin trading and structured bets. The platform employs a liquidity pool from a related protocol.

BET supports over 30 crypto assets as collateral.

“When you trade perpetual contracts, you are synthetically betting that the price of the underlying asset will rise. Prediction markets operate on the same concept. Essentially, both are ways to create a financial tie to an outcome,” explained Drift Labs co-founder Cindy Leow.

Currently, in its alpha version, BET has launched two real-world contracts related to the presidential race, with a total pool exceeding $300,000.

“Bringing real-world events into a permissionless financial system opens up the possibility to bet on everything from hyper-localized wagers with a few friends to attempts to predict the outcome of US elections,” explained Leow.

Drift plans to expand its scope to include sports, cryptocurrencies, and the economy, as stated on the project’s website.

The team is encouraging adoption by paying FUEL tokens to traders who place bets and stake DRIFT tokens.

According to Dune Analytics, transaction volume on the popular Ethereum-based prediction platform Polymarket reached $387 million in July, more than any other month in its history. For the incomplete month of August, the figure has already reached $295.9 million.

The volume of bets on the outcome of the presidential race exceeded $650 million.

Earlier, the cryptocurrency options exchange Deribit launched a new contract on the election outcome.

Back in July, Solana-based funds faced a record outflow of $39 million amid a sharp decline in meme token trading volume.