Polymarket and Kalshi continue to fight for hegemony, along with the announcement of new partnerships and investments.
After a slow ramp up throughout 2025, rivalry between Calci and Polymet has intensified, pushing the cumulative forecast market activity to new highs, while volume has reached its highest level since the 2024 presidential election.
According to Defillama, September marked the Polymarket’s highest monthly monthly this year at $1.43 billion. Meanwhile, Kalshi still closed its best month, processing more than $3 billion in September.
According to Dune Analytics, the week ending September 29th was the highest seven-day stretch in the forecast market sector since the 2024 presidential election, totaling $1.45 billion compared to Election Week’s $1.98 billion.
Meanwhile, activity and unique trading in the forecast market have hit new all-time highs for the third consecutive week led by 3.4 million deals per week in Karshi. The discrepancy between total volume and unique transactions suggests a higher proportion of low-value transactions, as opposed to election week.
It appears that there is a significant development almost every week in the forecast market space. Today’s notable news is a $2 billion investment in a poly company from New York Stock Exchange operator InterContinental Exchange (ICE).
Both market leaders benefit from a betting frenzy, but Karshi reportedly took a solid lead in the race. However, this means that the Kalshi market is not on-chain. In other words, in contrast to Polymarket’s distributed infrastructure, data comes from a centralized API.
“I think the idea of a ‘predicted market war’ is exaggerated. The overall addressable market is so large that multiple players can succeed. This is not all the spaces of the winners. In cryptography, there is too much PVP energy when what we really need is cooperation.
“Looking ahead, convergence of Oracle, AI and forecast markets unlocks all new use cases. As these markets mature from speculative tools to essential information infrastructure, trusted Oracle services will become the backbone, ensuring accurate, transparent and reliable results.
Despite the surge in activity on both platforms, the rivalry between Calci and Polymet continues. This continues to become prevalent on social media as it allegedly paid celebrities to target Polymarket CEO Shayne Coplan on social media after being attacked by the FBI.
While the controversial past remains a point of contention, Calci has recently sought to extend the olive branch into the crypto community through a new marketing strategy featuring prominent crypto influencers such as John Wang, Icob East and 0xultra. The specific nature of Calci’s partnership with the influencer is currently private.