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 response to Syndicate co-founder Ian Lee. 

There are sturdy similarities between the 2, as each are basically about mixing social conduct and cash, regardless of what phrases recommend, he informed Decrypt. (Disclosure: Decrypt’s mum or dad firm, DASTAN, operates a prediction market known as Myriad.)

“Within the summary, [DAOs are] about coordinating human capital and monetary capital on the identical 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 consider prediction markets not simply as “betting market issues,” however as “social monetary networks” used to coordinate human intelligence throughout generally hundreds 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 by so-called appchains.

Lately, the on-chain enterprise constructions—the place management is unfold out relatively than hierarchical—are sometimes considered as a pandemic-era reminiscence. Again then, DAOs have been in all places: Snoop Dogg joined a music-focused DAO, Peter Thiel backed funding collectives, and ConstitutionDAO famously tried, and failed, to purchase a replica of the U.S. Structure at public sale. 

DAOs nonetheless underpin hottest DeFi initiatives, resembling decentralized change Uniswap, and infrastructure like Arbitrum’s Ethereum layer-2 scaling community. However in comparison with prediction markets, one may argue that there’s an absence of seen momentum.

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

These platforms permit customers to guess on an unlimited array of future occasions, from the result of political elections as to if 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.