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Zeitgeist, the dApp for prediction markets, has revealed an integration with Polkassembly, a unified platform dedicated to democratizing governance on Substrate chains. The new alliance enables Polkadot community members to predict and profit from governance decisions directly within the Polkassembly UI, for the first time.
With most of the crypto world busily (and indeed breathlessly) making forecasts based on the long-awaited SEC approval of spot bitcoin ETFs, Zeitgeist and Polkassembly hope to incentivize a different kind of speculation: the sort based on proposals and motions put forward by Polkadot’s user base.
Predict-to-Earn in Polkadot
In Polkadot, anyone can submit a fresh proposal on-chain by initiating a referendum. If passed by the community, these proposals can win treasury funds to carry out their stated objectives. The collaboration between Zeitgeist and Polkassembly aims to enhance this process by allowing users to predict the outcomes of key referenda, moving past passive observation to active participation.
Users who have a strong opinion on a particular proposal, for instance, will get the chance to bet on its outcome, accessing Zeitgeist within the Polkassembly UI alongside sections like Bounties, Parachains, Events, Proposals, and Discussions.
“Zeitgeist and Polkassembly are dedicated to providing a seamless experience for users,” stated Zeitgeist CEO Logan Saether. “The integration allows easy access to ongoing referenda, with an added feature for making predictions on the proposal’s outcome. We’re aiming for most of these markets to be denominated in DOT, facilitating participation for the Polkadot community.”
There is already a live test case for this ambition to combine community engagement with profiteering: on January 9, a prediction market based on Referendum 385, submitted by Lunar Strategy, Flight3 and RZLT, opened. The three proposers seek to access treasury funds to promote the launch of Polkadot’s first memecoin, $DED, with a marketing campaign.
“The goal is to maintain quality and fair distribution without taking early investment that could lead to large allocations being dumped on investors,” reads the Referendum.
While some community members will see this as a noble aim, others have already rejected it outright: at the time of writing, some 40% of Polkadot community members have dismissed the motion. In any case, the live prediction market on Zeitgeist aims to “hold the proposers of Referendum 385 accountable”: bettors can forecast whether the proposal will deliver or fail in its mission to promote $DED via deliverables such as KOLs, articles, videos, and tweets.
Zeitgeist has encouraged all Polkadot governance participants to familiarize themselves with its platform through available tutorials and to access its live prediction market via the Polkassembly UI. It is hoped that by giving Polkadot users the chance to interact with and benefit from, Polkadot governance, the network itself will become more democratic.
The “DED Launch Campaign Accountability” prediction market will run until July 10, after which no more predictions can be made. Six days later, on July 16, the market will resolve and payouts triggered for those whose predictions proved correct.
Zeitgeist has called its Polkassembly collaboration a “groundbreaking step in decentralized governance.” An ambitious claim, to be sure, and one that’ll be judged according to interest generated by prediction markets like the one for $DED. On that front, time will tell.
