Melee, a new prediction market start that says speculation and bets should be as open as online discussion, has collected $ 3.5 million from Variant, DBA and a group of angel investors to roll out what it calls “viral markets.”
Crypto Native Businesses have witnessed the ongoing success of the Polymarket, the digital asset’s betting platform, which grew to prominence during the US election campaigns. Other new projects that need to emerge include ‘forecast Markets’, a type of dated futures contracts launched on Clearmatics’ Autonity Blockchain.
Melee, which allows everyone to create a market in something, see prediction markets that develop together with the Internet like other types of social networks, by dimensions such as media type, social graphs, interest graphs and more, said the VC company’s variant in an E email.
“We do not see prediction markets as a winning-take-all market, but as a budding category, like social networks where there can be many winners. Social networks reshaped the way we create and consume information and media,” Variant said.
“Unlike existing platforms that depend on centralized teams or professional market manufacturers, Melee uses a price mechanism that rewards dealers for being early and correct,” variant added.
The design also aims to attract creators. Influencers, podcasters or streamers can open markets tied to their audience’s interests and earn revenue from trading activity without taking on reputation risk. A fictional example could be a streamer launching a market for whether a blockbuster video game release will hit its target date so fans can speculate directly next to the conversation.
For dealers, the appeal lies in asymmetrical upside. Entering a market means early lower exposure costs, and payments increase as more participants endorse and the result becomes clearer.
The project team includes veterans from Solana, Avalanche, Monad, Sig, Microsoft and Amazon. According to the announcement, the long -term vision is to create “humanity’s platform for valuing beliefs”, where millions of markets continuously reflect changing cultural mood in real time.
