Decentralized predictions market project Polkamarkets has completed its token sale through the Polkastarter platform, and the project’s POLK tokens are now available for trading on Uniswap.

Polkamarkets is combining decentralized predictions markets with DeFi incentives and NFTs

Polkamarkets will be launching an on-chain predictions market on the Polkadot platform that will allow users to speculate on the outcomes of various events, ranging from (e)sports matches and politics to cryptocurrency prices.

The project will also incorporate DeFi incentives into its predictions market platform, with the goal of ensuring sufficient liquidity and improving participation. Polkamarkets also aims to include an entertainment component by providing gamified experiences with the help of NFTs, as well as live streams. Polkamarkets has already announced partnerships with NFT platform Terra Virtua, as well as well as decentralized oracles project Kylin Network.

Polkamarkets will first launch on Ethereum, but the team plans to migrate over to Polkadot once the Polkadot platform is able to deliver the smart contracts functionality that’s required by Polkamarkets. The first beta version of Polkamarkets is expected to launch on Ethereum in Q1 this year.

The project’s concept for a new-generation decentralized predictions market seems to be resonating with users, as Polkamarkets boasts almost 100,000 Twitter followers and over 55,000 members in two of its Telegram group. The hype was also evident in the strategic token sale, which was conducted before today’s public sale. In the strategic sale, Polkamarkets sold $625,000 worth of tokens to investors such as Moonrock Capital, Morningstar Ventures and Spark Digital Capital. In total, there were a whopping $80 million in allocation requests from investors interested in the strategic sale.

The POLK token is necessary for opening prediction markets on Polkamarkets, as well as collecting fees generated by the platform. The token is also employed by the project for its user incentives programs – users will be able to earn POLK by supplying liquidity to Polkamarkets or by using the platform to make predictions. In addition, 0.1% of the fees collected on Polkamarkets will be used to buy POLK tokens on decentralized exchanges.

POLK goes live via Polkastarter IDO and Uniswap listing

In order to participate in the IDO (initial DEX offering) on Polkastarter, users had to apply to be whitelisted. As is the norm with many other Polkastarter projects, this sale was pretty exclusive – in total, only 300 participants were allowed to purchase tokens at this stage, with the project looking to raise $90,000. In the Polkastarter IDO, POLK tokens were selling at $0.03 apiece, with each participant’s purchase being capped at $300.

A few hours after the pools on Polkastarter opened, the token was listed on Uniswap, the go-to automated market maker on Ethereum. The ETH-POLK pair on Uniswap has been extremely active so far, as is to be expected from the first day of trading for a highly anticipated token. The pool has seen over $52 million in volume in the last 24 hours, and its current liquidity stands at just over $1.7 million.

Currently, POLK tokens are going for about $2.59 at Uniswap, but it’s reasonable to expect a lot of volatility in the first few days of trading as the token goes through the initial process of price discovery. There has already been a lot of volatility – the token shot up to almost $5.1 within one hour of the launch.

The total supply of POLK is capped at 100 million tokens, so the current price would imply a market cap valuation of $259 million. However, the entire supply of POLK tokens will not be in circulation until 21 months after the token sale. The initial circulating supply of the token is 13.45% of the total supply.

The bottom line

In theory, predictions markets seem like a slam dunk use-case for blockchain tech and decentralized finance. However, projects such as Augur and Gnosis haven’t really taken off yet, suggesting that there’s still plenty of room for improvement in the decentralized predictions markets space. Will combining prediction markets with NFTs and DeFi incentives prove to be a winning recipe for Polkamarkets?