The World Cup has just wrapped up, and a set of data has been going viral among many friends: during the World Cup period alone, Gate’s prediction market section saw more than 500k participants, and the cumulative trading volume directly broke through $528 million. On July 19, daily trading volume even topped Polymarket’s first place across all channels.

Many people might wonder: previously, on-chain prediction markets were thought to have high barriers and only technical veterans could play—so why did so many players suddenly join?
One of the most straightforward reasons is that previously complicated on-chain operations have been significantly simplified. Before, if you wanted to participate in Polymarket, you had to set up a Web3 wallet first, figure out gas fees across different public chains, and then transfer assets cross-chain. Along the way, if you encountered network congestion or operational slip-ups, the match might have already started before your bet went through. This is not very friendly for non-on-chain fans.
And the most direct point of this experience upgrade is that they made it one-stop.
If you already use @Gate in your day-to-day, there’s no need to download extra plugins or mess with on-chain wallets. Just find the Alpha section on the app’s home page to go directly to the Polymarket page. You also don’t need to specifically swap into all kinds of weird gas tokens—you can use the USDT already in your account to take part in predictions for all kinds of events. It compresses complex operations that used to take new users a dozen-plus steps into just a couple of clicks.
Of course, lowering the operational barrier is only the first step. For sports events or trending hot topics, analysis seems to be everywhere online—“one side says this, another side says that.” But most people still feel there’s information asymmetry. During this experience, there’s a feature that’s especially friendly for beginners: the “smart money” tracking function. It directly organizes the positions and latest activities of high-win-rate traders. You don’t need to be a seasoned sports analyst, and you don’t need to wade through endless takes on social media—just look at which side those accounts with consistently high win rates are backing, and it provides an intuitive reference for your own judgment.
With the World Cup’s finale, this prediction-trading scenario has also quickly extended into other areas. For example, the esports trading season that just started on July 20 has a prize pool of 200k USDT. For friends who like to watch esports matches, the participation method continues the ultra-simplified process: from new-user benefits to weekly trading tasks, and then to the prediction leaderboard—everything is built around concrete profit incentives, with no empty concepts.
Whether you watch games or esports, the essence of prediction markets is that it turns our judgment about where events are headed into an interactive experience you can take part in in real time. Once the tedious technical barriers are removed, what’s left for ordinary people is a clear, smooth, and fun new way to participate.
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