Prediction Markets as Liquidity Engines

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Kurush Dubash, CEO of Dome, on unified API for prediction markets

Interview
they win ultimately by being liquidity engines.
Analyzed 8 sources

The core battle is shifting from owning the user interface to owning the trade flow. In prediction markets, the exchange that becomes the default place where outside apps, brokers, media products, and trading tools send orders can compound volume fastest, which improves depth, tightens prices, and makes that venue even more attractive for the next partner and the next trader. That is why open APIs matter so much more here than in a typical consumer app.

  • Dome describes the market as already concentrated around volume seekers, with less than 8,000 Polymarket users driving 80% of traded dollars. That makes liquidity the product. Builders and routers that direct those power users to a venue are not side traffic, they are the traffic that determines where markets feel deepest and most usable.
  • Kalshi and Polymarket are both expanding distribution beyond their own apps. Kalshi has pushed its data into partners like CNBC, CNN, Barchart, Coinbase Custody, and PrizePicks, while Dome notes Polymarket grew by being unusually open to builders. The pattern is the same, get the market into more surfaces, then capture the order flow behind them.
  • This is why an aggregator can matter without posting capital itself. Dome matches the same event across venues, shows combined depth, and routes an order to the best book. In practice that makes fragmented markets feel like one larger market, and it gives exchanges an incentive to stay open because extra routing volume can be more valuable than forcing everyone into one closed app.

The likely next step is that prediction market operators look more like exchanges and data networks, while consumer apps, sportsbooks, brokers, and media companies become distribution layers on top. The winners will be the venues that accept outside order flow fastest, spread their prices into the most endpoints, and turn that reach into a self reinforcing liquidity advantage.