During Link:NYC, Chainlink Labs’ Chief Business Officer, Johann Eid, sat down with Polymarket’s Chief Legal Officer, Neal Kumar, to discuss how prediction markets are changing the way institutions and people around the world assess global risk.
As the world’s largest onchain prediction market platform, Polymarket allows users to place bets on various future events including economic indicators, weather patterns, awards, election results, and legislative outcomes.
“It’s very specific questions that people really care about,” Kumar said.
These questions are not just exciting to retail participants; they’re also attractive to institutions with a stake in global events.
“You can have some prognosticator, expert, pollster, or pundit say, ‘I think this is what it’s going to be.’ And what we found is that our prediction markets are far more accurate, far more reliable, and give you that tangible percentage that most institutions are looking for.”
In 2025, Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange, committed up to $2 billion in strategic investments and data partnerships with Polymarket.
“Once their name became attached with Polymarket, the institutional credibility almost instantly showed up,” Kumar explained.
Last year, Polymarket also partnered with Chainlink to launch 15-minute prediction markets for Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, and XRP powered by Chainlink Data Streams and Chainlink Automation. Earlier this year, Polymarket launched 5-minute prediction markets backed by Chainlink. These 5- and 15-minute crypto price markets have since driven more than $11 billion in trading volume.
Polymarket recently deepened its use of Chainlink and adopted the Chainlink Runtime Environment to facilitate high-speed, short-duration 15-minute up/down prediction markets for gold and silver, as the platform expands its markets to commodities, equities, and forex.
“The most important thing to get right is to get it right,” Kumar said.
“When you have this many markets operating this fast, they’ve got to be reliable, but they’ve got to be quick and they’ve got to be accurate. Partnerships with Chainlink is what allows us to really focus our energy, effort, and resources on developing the best product. We need a partner that has institutional credibility, a partner that can resolve these markets quickly, accurately, succinctly.”
As prediction markets expand into stocks and commodities, Kumar expects vast possibilities.
“The use case for these products and the interest in these products is pretty well established at this point. We’re expecting fairly robust participation.”
“That’s really one of the magic things about our space is that you will always be surprised by whatever you release,” Eid agreed.
“People will always find a way to surprise you, because in crypto, the word is basically your market. There is this obsession with what things are doing on a second-by-second basis and we’re trying to lean into that and provide products to support it.”
Watch the full conversation.