About prediction market, I shared some thoughts at yesterday's Columbia University blockchain class. Would love to share here: Prediction is human nature. It’s one of the oldest and most universal cognitive behaviors we have. Life is uncertain — and from the very beginning, humans have sought to know the future. Prediction isn’t new. It’s everywhere, every day. - Ancient times: people predicted where to hunt — for survival. - Astrology in Babylon and India: the first systematic prediction framework, observing patterns in the stars. - Societies: forecasting outcomes of wars, harvests, and births to plan better. - Dating: predicting future happiness with a significant other. - Parenting: predicting our children’s needs and reactions. - Weather: scientific prediction powered by data and models. - Stock markets: collective forecasting of companies’ performance. - Insurance: prediction of risk and loss probabilities. - Even AI models: at their core, they predict the next token, pixel, or action. Building a product based on human nature, first principle thinking. The opportunity is massive. But what’s left to build? With strong incumbents like Polymarket, is there still room for innovation?Absolutely. The space still has clear gaps — and therefore, opportunities: - UMA’s Optimistic Oracle (OO), which Polymarket depends on, is decentralized and transparent but slow (24–48h resolution). Opportunity: domain-specific or AI-assisted oracles for faster, contextual resolution. - UMA OO can be vulnerable in low-liquidity, low-attention markets. Opportunity: build cross-protocol incentive layers to reward honest disputes, or autonomous dispute-bot networks to detect manipulation. - Prediction markets still feel like DeFi dApps: complex wallets, bridging, and gas. Opportunity: leverage account abstraction and gasless UX to make prediction markets feel like normal apps. - Polymarket covers only well-defined, publicly verifiable events. Opportunity: solve for subjective or multi-stage predictions - Liquidity is spread across many small markets. Opportunity: aggregators, routing layers, or AMM-style liquidity pools to concentrate and reuse capital efficiently. We also learned a lot from the founders we talked to, we ask why and how, and learn their brilliant mind, vision and values (the beauty of our job ^_^). Here's one: "TikTok is becoming the next universal prediction market. In some way, every scroll, every like, every share — is a bet on what others will find valuable next. That’s how big the opportunity really is and why we decided to work on this." And another one: "The beauty of prediction markets lies in their duality — they are living content and precise market instruments at the same time. It’s rarely a single clever mechanism or a viral go-to-market that determines success. Instead, it’s about continuously orchestrating the organic (human behavior, narratives, attention) and the inorganic (protocol design, incentives, liquidity) parts of a complex system. To sustain that orchestration over time, a team needs more than technical skill — it needs a refined taste for complexity." With the respect of Polymarket's founder Shayne Coplan, who was inspired by economic theories around information aggregation, decentralized systems, and especially the concept of futarchy (Robin Hanson). We also see the Big Picture - The "next Polymarket" could be emerge by abstracting crypto complexity, expanding byond binary bets, and owning its data + oracle layer - becoming a prediction infrastructure stack rather than just a betting site. If you're the building naturally curious about solving problems in this broad direction, welcome to join EASY Residency - Apply here: 👉 wkf.ms/3IA5iBk