Polymarket has made headlines this week with several developments surrounding its forecasting platform. The plan is gaining legitimacy as ICE considers a $9 billion deal and Wall Street is taking notice.
Against this backdrop, network effects extend across multiple chains and protocols that power decentralized prediction markets.
Sponsored Sponsored
Altcoin Stack Powers Polymarket Breakout Moment
BeInCrypto recently reported that Polymarket could host the industry’s largest airdrop. This, combined with headlines regarding future ICE investments, positions selected altcoins to benefit from rising platform valuations.
1. UMA: The silent backbone of prediction markets
UMA is important to Polymarket, but no one is paying attention. While Polymarket’s explosive growth has garnered attention, UMA remains a quiet infrastructure layer that enables decentralized forecasting.
Polymarket uses UMA’s Optimistic Oracle (OO) to transparently verify market results. This decentralized data verification mechanism allows proponents and objectors to determine the truth on-chain without relying on a central authority.
“Polymarket supports UMA as a resolution source for markets displayed in the Polymarket.com interface. While Polymarket is oracle-agonistic in nature, the UMA integration provides another option for market creators,” the platform shared in a recent blog.
Internally, UMA’s oracle ensures that all predictions, including elections, markets, sports, etc., are resolved securely and trustlessly.
The UMA-CTF adapter introduced at Polygon connects Polymarket’s conditional token framework (CTF) to UMA’s oracle, making any market resolution verifiable.
Despite this important role, investors focus on the front-end success of polymarkets and largely ignore UMA. If sentiment shifts towards recognizing the importance of oracles, demand for on-chain data validation will increase and UMA could see a significant upside.
Sponsored Sponsored
2. Polygon (MATIC): A chain that enhances the scalability of Polymarket
Polymarket runs entirely on Polygon’s Proof-of-Stake network and benefits from its low-cost, high-speed infrastructure. The platform’s recent integration of Polygon and X (Twitter) has exposed over 600 million users to the on-chain prediction market and, in turn, to the Polygon ecosystem itself.
Polygon’s upcoming upgrades (PIP 60 and 43) promise to increase throughput to 1,000 TPS and reduce finality to approximately 5 seconds, directly improving the prediction market user experience.
Sponsored Sponsored
According to Polygon Labs, these upgrades will enhance the transactional capabilities of apps such as Polymarket, RWA, and payments, solidifying Polygon as the go-to chain for consumer-scale cryptocurrency use cases.
“Polymarket’s success is a win for Polygon, Ethereum, and the entire crypto ecosystem,” said Josh Stark of the Ethereum Foundation.
3. Ethereum (ETH): The payment layer behind it all
In fact, Ethereum is important to the Polymarket story, serving as the foundational layer that made its existence possible.
“Since 2020, polymarkets have not been possible without an Ethereum USDC native with an EVM wallet,” said Nick Tomaino.
Polymarket’s reliance on the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) ensures access to the richest development talent, tools, and security infrastructure in the industry.
Sponsored Sponsored
The integration of USDC on Ethereum also facilitates seamless settlement of prediction markets.
As Ethereum’s Layer 2 ecosystem expands, including rollups like Katana, apps like Polymarket will have even more scalability options.
Stark predicts that this symbiotic relationship between Ethereum and its L2 will make building on top of EVM the “natural choice” for future breakthrough applications in the near future.
Polymarket’s jump in valuation isn’t just a win for investors, including CEO Shane Coplan. Validate the entire Ethereum-Polygon-UMA stack.
While the spotlight is on front-end platforms, the deeper value may lie in protocols that enhance trustless logic and scalability.
As prediction markets go mainstream, these three altcoins could quietly become the biggest beneficiaries of the rise of Polymarket.
