Prediction markets are set to go mainstream by 2025, quadrupling annual trading volume, as a handful of trading platforms consolidate control over what is quickly becoming an institutional-scale product, according to a new study. report from blockchain security company CertiK.
Total industry volume rose from $15.8 billion in 2024 to $63.5 billion in 2025, the report said, with activity remaining high after the US election cycle and extending into January 2026.
That persistence is important because it suggests that election trading behaved less like a one-time spike and more like a takeover event that enticed new users into repeat behavior.
In particular, the week ending January 18 set a record of approximately $6 billion in notional volume, the report said, reflecting how quickly the prediction markets have transitioned from a niche crypto product to a high-turnover trading platform.
CertiK’s central argument, however, is that the next phase of growth collides with an integrity problem that has less to do with smart contract exploits than with the layers that define onboarding, the ‘real’ meaning of volume and the mechanisms that determine who gets paid.
A three-platform market, with single-point failures
Three platforms now account for more than 95% of global prediction market volume, according to CertiK, and each is following a different path to dominance.
Kalshi, which operates as a regulated platform in the US, is positioned as the compliance-first model. Polymarket has captured the majority of crypto native and international participation.
Meanwhile, Opinion is the fastest-growing newcomer, using ecosystem incentives to scale from effectively zero to around 30% market share in a matter of months, the report said.
That concentration turns operational issues into systemic issues.
An outage at any major location is no longer a contained event; it’s a market-wide confidence shock that could spread across liquidity pools, data feeds and user balances, especially as brokers and mainstream distribution begin to treat forecasting opportunities as a new class of information products.
CertiK points to a December 2025 incident involving Magic.link, Polymarket’s third-party authentication provider, as a preview of where the industry is most exposed.
Accounts using Web2-style login methods such as email or social authentication were compromised, putting funds in the affected accounts at risk while keeping the settlement layer on the chain secure.
In the context of CertiK, it was an identity error, not a settlement error, and it highlighted the trade-off of “Web2.5” onboarding: a smoother user experience in exchange for centralized points of failure.
This lesson is uncomfortable for an industry that markets itself for decentralization.
Prediction markets can support fully collateralized on-chain settlement while retaining the same third-party risks that plague conventional fintech, including authentication, account recovery, and platform-level access controls.
If the band lies, but the odds still talk
The report also draws a line between two concepts that are often confused in crypto markets: trading volume as a measure of adoption and probability outcomes as a measure of information.
According to the report, incentive programs can increase activity without necessarily improving the quality of forecast signals.
CertiK reported that wash trading remains widespread, citing research that estimates artificial volume on some platforms reached as high as 60% during peak airdrop farming periods.
Such distortion could mislead outsiders, including potential institutional users, regarding liquidity depth and organic participation.
Still, CertiK argues that the most important question is whether the probabilities remain useful even if the tape contains a lot of noise.
According to the report, wash trading has inflated volume metrics but has not yet compromised price accuracy, and probability results have remained reliable for forecasting.
This creates tension for platforms that want to switch to the regular financial sector; they may be able to position themselves as information utilities, even if their activity statistics are partly manufactured by incentives.
It also poses a more difficult strategic decision for the market leaders.
If distribution and credibility depend on information quality, platforms may have to become less tolerant of behavior that increases volume in the short term but undermines the optics and trust necessary for institutional capital.
Chain migration and the new implementation of sanitary facilities
Among the most important figures, CertiK describes a structural rotation in the way the liquidity of the prediction market is implemented.
Polygon maintained its “legacy dominance” through the November election cycle, the report said, but BNB Chain’s volume soared starting in late 2025, correlating with Opinion’s accelerated rollout.
During the week of January 19, CertiK said BNB Chain’s activity had effectively inverted the historical hierarchy, capturing the plurality of weekly flows and pushing off-chain settlement to a secondary position even as Kalshi posted record performance in NFL playoff trading.
That shift is more than a scoreboard for blockchain ecosystems. It changes who can participate, how trades are handled, and what market structures are feasible.
CertiK notes that many on-chain platforms are moving from automated market makers to central limit order books deployed directly on high-throughput chains, a design that delivers tighter spreads and more familiar mechanisms for professional traders.
In practice, it also moves prediction markets closer to an exchange-like microstructure, with the associated risks of front-running and the disadvantages of MEV-style transaction ordering on public networks.
The oracle problem, the moment when “truth” becomes a payoff
If there’s a single tail risk that unites the industry’s growth story, it’s resolution, the move that turns opportunity into cash.
CertiK characterizes oracle manipulation as the main technical attack vector, because market resolution mechanisms directly control the distribution of funds.
It also says that ambiguous market definitions have already caused disputes on all major platforms by 2025, especially where political outcomes or disputed official results create gray areas.
The report maps the most important resolution models on the dominant platforms.
Polymarket is described as using UMA’s optimistic oracle, in which outcomes are automatically resolved unless contested within a challenge window, with disputes escalating to votes of the UMA token holders.
Kalshi is framed as someone who uses centralized arbitration, where human referees determine outcomes based on authoritative sources.
Opinion is described as the reliance on consensus oracles, where designated parties must agree on an outcome.
Each model uses a different trust assumption. Optimistic oracles can be fast for unambiguous outcomes, but create edge-case vulnerability, including the risk that large token holders can influence votes in low-liquidity disputes.
Centralized arbitrage is predictable, but requires trust in the platform operator. Consensus oracles distribute authority, but are still dependent on the incentives and integrity of the designated resolvers.
As prediction markets grow larger, these trade-offs become harder to ignore.
The industry can tolerate occasional controversies when it comes to cryptocurrencies. However, it becomes a governance crisis when market opportunities start to emerge in mainstream distribution channels or are used by institutions as input for risk decisions.