Prediction markets did something in 24 months that most financial verticals take a decade to pull off - went from under $100 million in monthly volume in early 2024 to over $13 billion by late 2025.

At Paris Blockchain Week 2026, LKI CEO Maryna Barysheva moderated The Odds: Prediction Markets Live - a panel hosted in the Louver Carousel itself - that brought together five industry experts:

1. Declan Fox (VP & Head, Linea)

2. Raymond Ratti (Partnership Director, Galactic Markets)

3. Njoku Emmanuel (DeFi Expert on Prediction Markets)

4. Jennifer De Broglie (CMO, AlphaTon Capital)

5. Ofir Eliasi (CEO, Ultramarkets)

Chain selection is a strategic decision, not a technical one. Fox was clear: builders are making this call too late and with too little rigor. If you underestimate the foundation - composability, liquidity depth, and developer tooling - you'll have to rebuild it later at a much higher cost, slowing down your go-to-market.

AI agents are already in the market, but the infrastructure hasn't caught up yet. Ratti noted that Polystrat is already trading autonomously on Polymarket, 24/7. Eliasi pushed this further: as multi-agent stacks become more sophisticated, the "wisdom of the crowd" that gives prediction markets their core value proposition could quietly become the output of a few well-capitalized algorithms. Platforms that preserve signal integrity while serving both human and machine participants are no longer a future problem to solve.

The yield layer is entirely missing - and that is the biggest untapped opportunity. Emmanuel highlighted that Aave and Uniswap hold over $140 billion in total value locked. Prediction markets aggregate capital and attention at scale, yet no yield infrastructure exists on top of them. That gap creates a product opportunity that nobody has seriously built yet.

Narrative without fundamentals will not raise capital. De Broglie was direct: the prediction markets vertical is hot, and that is exactly why investors are still skeptical about it. The founders who will close rounds are the ones who can articulate the specific market structure problem they are solving - not the ones who can explain why the space is growing.

Polymarket and Kalshi control 97% of global prediction market volume today. That concentration mirrors early crypto exchange dominance, and we know how that played out for anyone trying to disrupt the space. Only the players who find a genuine edge will be able to break through this early-forming monopoly.