Prediction Markets and DAOs Are Cousins, Says Syndicate Co-Founder

Prediction markets and decentralized autonomous organizations, or DAOs, could also be nearer cousins than most individuals assume, in line with Syndicate co-founder Ian Lee. 

There are robust similarities between the 2, as each are essentially about mixing social habits and cash, regardless of what phrases counsel, he advised Decrypt. (Disclosure: Decrypt’s mother or father firm, DASTAN, operates a prediction market known as Myriad.)

“Within the summary, [DAOs are] about coordinating human capital and monetary capital on the similar time,” Lee defined. “So, prediction markets that coordinate capital in addition to human intelligence, I consider these as a DAO.”



Lee, whose firm helped create once-prominent DAOs like ConstitutionDAO and Nike’s .SWOOSH, acknowledged that DAO die-hards may not totally embrace his comparability. Nonetheless, he believes it highlights how crypto-native labels can generally stifle innovation.

Lee prefers to think about prediction markets not simply as “betting market issues,” however as “social monetary networks” used to coordinate human intelligence throughout generally 1000’s of people to foretell outcomes.

Syndicate itself has developed its focus from solely offering DAO infrastructure to enabling communities to launch their very own blockchains via so-called appchains.

As of late, the on-chain enterprise buildings—the place management is unfold out somewhat than hierarchical—are sometimes considered as a pandemic-era reminiscence. Again then, DAOs had been all over the place: Snoop Dogg joined a music-focused DAO, Peter Thiel backed funding collectives, and ConstitutionDAO famously tried, and failed, to purchase a duplicate of the U.S. Structure at public sale. 

DAOs nonetheless underpin hottest DeFi tasks, reminiscent of decentralized alternate Uniswap, and infrastructure like Arbitrum’s Ethereum layer-2 scaling community. However in comparison with prediction markets, one may argue that there’s a scarcity of seen momentum.

Kalshi, as an example, just lately surpassed $1 billion in month-to-month quantity, regardless of looming regulatory threats. In the meantime, Polymarket noticed 226,000 energetic merchants final month, producing $1 billion in buying and selling quantity, in line with a Dune dashboard.

These platforms permit customers to guess on an enormous array of future occasions, from the end result of political elections as to whether Taylor Swift will announce a being pregnant. In that sense, the subsequent chapter for DeFi will not be written in governance boards, however within the odds of tomorrow’s information.