The Hidden Winner of the World Cup

As one of the most-watched sporting events in human history, the World Cup has never been just a game.

It’s more like a time-scheduled attention machine. Matches, broadcasts, advertisements, social media discussions, pre-match predictions, and post-match controversies are all swept into the same narrative arena in a short span of time. The LED boards along the sidelines may seem like mere background, but with every attack, replay, and slow-motion shot, they’re repeatedly brought before a global audience.

This year, a name that hadn’t been commonly mentioned by ordinary users showed up on this advertising slot: ADI PredictStreet.

Image source: ADI PredictStreet’s World Cup sideline advertisement

This is a very interesting clue.

Because it isn’t Polymarket—the platform that has already captured the prediction market users’ minds—that appeared here. As early as April this year, ADI PredictStreet reached a multi-year partnership with FIFA, and as a tier-one cooperation partner, became FIFA World Cup 2026’s official prediction market partner.

Another prediction market star project, Kalshi, later also ran a co-screen placement with ADI PredictStreet, but this was not a FIFA official partnership Kalshi directly obtained. According to Bloomberg, for this co-branded collaboration alone, Kalshi paid ADI $20 million.

That means ADI is the more hidden winner in this World Cup prediction market narrative.

For no other reason than that it secured the prediction market entry point to the world’s biggest sporting event first.

And behind this entry point is ADI Chain.

A Chain That Starts from the Back Office

Unlike the chains that are widely known to the public, ADI Chain’s positioning is a bit different.

It isn’t a chain built around a single application, and it isn’t only a trading venue serving Crypto users. From the very beginning, it has been aimed at governments, banks, financial institutions, and enterprise-level applications—seeking to handle stablecoin settlement, real-world asset tokenization, payment networks, and institutional asset infrastructure.

In the past few years, the most common path for new public chains has often started from inside Crypto: first build a developer ecosystem, then pull in DeFi, NFTs, memes, airdrops, and points; prove there’s a market with TVL, trading volume, and daily active users; and then move closer to the institutional world.

Now, pressure on this path is becoming increasingly obvious.

Public chain activity depends to a large extent on asset activity, and a chain’s ability to continuously generate new assets, new narratives, and new reasons to trade is limited. After the meme craze fades, trading volume drops; after the airdrop expectations end, users leave. Even a foundational network like Ethereum faces a long-term tug-of-war between application growth and asset activity.

ETH network fees fluctuate noticeably with on-chain asset cycles; data source: DeFiLlama

ADI Chain’s path is more like the reverse.

It isn’t trying to first manufacture a burst of asset hype on-chain and then wait for capital and institutions to enter. Instead, it aims to move existing financial activity onto the chain: stablecoin issuance and settlement, tokenization of real-world assets, custody and transfer of institutional assets, and fund movement within payment networks.

This path can be seen most clearly in stablecoins.

What best reflects ADI Chain’s approach isn’t USDT or USDC, which target liquidity for global crypto users, but rather DDSC, which has a more regional and institutional focus.

DDSC is a stablecoin pegged to the dirham, backed by FAB, IHC, ADQ, and the regulatory framework authorized by the UAE Central Bank. It doesn’t serve a broad range of trading scenarios; it serves payment, settlement, and institutional fund flow within the UAE’s local financial system.

The most recent large public transaction occurred in May.

A filing by IHC on the Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange shows that, via $DDSC , it completed a transaction on ADI Chain of 110 million dirhams—about $30 million. The filing states:

This is one of the largest single stablecoin transactions in the region.

The same choice also appears with PUSD.

Issued by Palm Azgar Finance, this stablecoin emphasizes not trading liquidity first, but compliance with Islamic law. Reportedly, PUSD targets corporate treasury departments, exchanges, and payment processing institutions, with a circulating supply of about $2.3 billion, and its target market is the Islamic finance system, which exceeds $3 trillion.

At this point, ADI Chain’s first-layer path is already clear: first, bring settlement needs from regional financial systems into the chain.

DDSC corresponds to institutional fund flow within the UAE, while PUSD corresponds to a larger Islamic finance market. What they solve isn’t the question of “whether there is a stablecoin on-chain,” but whether money in regional finance can enter the chain in a way that institutions will find acceptable.

This is also the prerequisite for the payment network that comes later to function. Whether it’s the Mastercard partnership for cross-border payments in the Middle East, or M-Pesa, which covers 8 African markets with more than 60 million monthly active users—the real requirement isn’t another on-chain asset, but a foundational network capable of supporting settlement and fund movement.

Once the money comes in and can move, the next step is assets.

From Regional Settlement to Institutional Assets

But ADI Chain’s rollout is certainly not limited to the Middle East.

If DDSC and PUSD prove its entry into regional financial systems, then international institutions and infrastructure providers such as BlackRock, Franklin Templeton, BNY, and SettleMint correspond to another line: how global assets enter this on-chain financial network.

This starts with custody.

In May, BNY, Finstreet, and the ADI Foundation announced a partnership to provide institutional-grade digital asset custody within ADGM, with extension to ADI Chain. For institutional assets, custody is not a supporting service—it’s the entry point itself. Without compliant custody, there will be no subsequent issuance, trading, and settlement.

Source: Official press release

After custody comes issuance.

The partnership between ADI Foundation and SettleMint is on the digital securities side. SettleMint is an institutional-focused tokenization infrastructure service provider, and the collaboration takes place under the ADGM framework. In other words, what ADI aims to take in isn’t a packaged RWA product, but the digital securities process within a regulated environment.

Going outward next are asset management institutions.

BlackRock and Franklin Templeton appearing here is not just about adding two more well-known big names. If RWA relies solely on on-chain protocols to package assets by themselves, it will quickly reach its limit. The real capability to bring assets in still lies with traditional asset managers, custodians, issuance tools, and settlement networks.

Only by putting these lines together does ADI Chain’s asset narrative become viable.

It doesn’t start by slapping a “RWA” label and then stuffing in partners. It starts from the most troublesome point for getting assets into the financial system: where the assets are stored, who issues them, who manages them, and ultimately which network they circulate on.

When Real-World Finance Becomes On-Chain Costs

By this point, ADI’s pieces of the resource puzzle have basically been laid out.

The World Cup entry point, regional stablecoins, institutional custody, digital securities infrastructure, and asset management institutions may seem to belong to different businesses, but in the end they all point to the same question: can they be continuously brought into ADI Chain?

This is where the ADI token fits in.

It’s not a token serving a single application, and it’s not an accessory to a certain class of assets. The value of the ADI token depends on whether ADI Chain can organize these entry points, funds, and assets into an ecosystem that can run continuously.

If these collaborations are only independent progress with no shared linkage, the ADI token only gets a connected narrative. But if they truly generate trades, settlements, and asset transfers on the same chain, then the ADI token will be taking on the underlying fuel that the ADI ecosystem repeatedly runs on during its operation.

This is also what makes ADI Chain’s path different from many other public chains.

It doesn’t first create a round of asset hype on-chain and then wait for external capital to enter. Instead, it tries to connect the already-existing funds, assets, and transaction processes from real-world finance onto the chain first, and then let those flows support the use cases for the ADI token in return.

The World Cup is simply pushing ADI to the front.

What ultimately determines the value of the ADI token is whether these visible entry points can continue to bring funds, assets, and transactions back to ADI Chain.

This article is a submission and does not represent the views of BlockBeats

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