Dune Analytics: Polymarket's global trading volumes have fallen behind Kalshi in recent months; sources: product delays are contributing to Polymarket's decline
Context & Ripple Effects
The two platforms’ competition had already scaled sharply: combined weekly notional volume exceeded an earlier election-period peak in October 2025, while November data showed Kalshi ahead of Polymarket. Kalshi also expanded distribution through a Phantom wallet integration.
The coverage frames the current volume gap as an execution issue rather than a collapse in demand for event trading. Polymarket’s subsequent reported US-volume growth underscores how quickly share can move as products and access change.
First-order effects
- Kalshi gains the near-term volume lead, strengthening its position with traders and counterparties that value active, liquid markets.
- Polymarket faces immediate pressure to clear reported product delays, since lower activity can make its markets less attractive to participants.
Second-order effects
- Liquidity can reinforce Kalshi’s lead: higher activity tends to improve market depth and price discovery, giving new users and integration partners a reason to concentrate there.
- Polymarket is likely to put greater weight on product and market-access initiatives, including its stated pursuit of US margin-trading approval, to reduce friction for traders.
Third-order effects
- If leadership continues to rotate with product delivery and distribution, prediction markets may increasingly compete as platforms differentiated by liquidity, wallet or social distribution, and trading mechanics—not merely by contract selection.
- The category’s rapid volume growth will make market integrity and regulatory access more consequential competitive variables, particularly as platforms broaden into new contract types.
The trend: Prediction markets are evolving from a two-player growth story into a platform race where execution, liquidity, distribution, and regulated trading features can rapidly reshape share.