Gate integrates with Polymarket prediction markets: How event trading is reshaping the crypto market structure

From Price Trading to Event Pricing: Extending the Market’s Boundaries

In the past, crypto trading mostly revolved around whether an asset’s price would rise or fall. But as the market gradually matures, the core of trading is no longer just about price movement—it further expands to whether something will happen in the future.

This shift upgrades trading instruments from a single number to an assessment of future outcomes. The event itself becomes a tradable object, and it also gives the market a higher level of expressive power.

Quantifying Expectations: How Markets Price the Future

The key to a prediction market is turning what used to be subjective judgment into a specific price. When participants buy and sell based on the outcome of a particular event, a market price will naturally form and reflect the overall leaning of expectations.

This mechanism makes the market not only a trading venue, but also an information-aggregation system. Price changes, to a certain extent, show the group’s dynamic adjustment of its views about the future.

Cognitive Differences Are Opportunity: A Shift in Trading Logic

Compared with traditional markets that rely on technical analysis or fundamentals, event-based trading emphasizes differences in viewpoints. Different users may disagree about the outcome of an event based on their information sources, judgment ability, or understanding of the market—and this disagreement is precisely the source of trading opportunities. Even if the final result has not yet been revealed, the price volatility that occurs in the process can also create space for strategy execution. Trading is no longer just about predicting prices—it’s about participating in the prediction itself.

A Dual-Track Trading Interface: Lowering Participation Barriers

To allow users across different levels to participate, the platform adopts a tiered approach in its product design:

1. Intuitive prediction mode
   Presenting outcomes with probability and simplified pricing lets users quickly understand market consensus and lowers the learning cost.

2. Advanced trading mode
   Providing a full order book and depth data enables users who are familiar with trading to deploy more granular strategies.

This design makes the market both easy to use and professional, encouraging broader participation.

How Do You Participate in a Prediction Market?

Participating in the Polymarket prediction market is actually very straightforward. Just complete the following steps to get started quickly:

1. Update the App version
   Please update your Gate App to v8.12.5 or above to ensure the Polymarket functionality modules can be used normally.

2. Log in to your account
   After opening the App, log in using your Gate account. If you haven’t registered yet, you’ll need to complete account registration and basic verification first.

3. Go to the Polymarket page
   On the home page, click the “Alpha” entry to enter the Polymarket section. Here, you can browse the currently open prediction events and choose the topics you’re interested in.

4. Choose a prediction and place an order
   After entering a specific event, based on your judgment, select “Yes” or “No,” enter the number of shares you want to buy, and confirm to complete the trade.

5. Wait for settlement and claim your earnings
   When the prediction event ends, the platform will settle based on the final outcome. If your prediction is correct, the corresponding position will receive the appropriate earnings.

Overall, the process is similar to making an information-based judgment + trading decision. The participation barrier is low, but it’s still recommended to do basic analysis and risk assessment before participating to improve prediction accuracy.

Centralized and On-Chain Integration: Expanding Participation Options

In terms of participation paths, the platform uses a dual-track parallel structure:

1. General users can trade directly through the account system using stablecoins. The overall experience is close to a traditional spot market.
2. Users who are familiar with blockchain can enter the on-chain environment through a Web3 wallet and trade and settle on the Polygon network.

This design balances convenience with decentralization, enabling users with different backgrounds to participate.

Tool Integration and Process Optimization: Improving the User Experience

On the feature level, the platform integrates information such as price movements, probability changes, and market depth, allowing users to grasp the market status instantly. At the same time, the process—from opening a position to final settlement—has been systematized. Once the event outcome is determined, earnings are automatically converted and allocated to the account, reducing the cumbersome steps of manual operations. This integration makes the overall experience more like a traditional financial system while still preserving the flexibility of event-based trading.

The Future Positioning of Prediction Markets

As the market expands and more participants join, the role of prediction markets may not be limited to trading tools. The pricing mechanism at its core is aggregating the judgments of a large number of users, forming a decentralized expectation-based pricing model. As this mechanism continues to mature, it may become one of the important ways to measure the value of information. Prediction markets are not just financial products; they may become key infrastructure that connects data, cognition, and market value.

Summary

The rise of prediction markets shows that crypto trading is moving from being price-oriented to being event-oriented. This change not only alters the form of trading, but also redefines the market’s function. Through more intuitive interaction design and diverse participation methods, event-based trading is gradually lowering barriers and attracting more users into this space. In the future, as the mechanism improves and applications expand, prediction markets are poised to become an indispensable part of the crypto ecosystem, while continuing to broaden the realm of possibilities in market imagination.