Polymarket Roars Back: Staking Resurgence Fuels $1B Monthly Volume Surge

After a sluggish spring, Polymarket’s staking engine just kicked back into high gear—and traders are piling in like Wall Street bankers at an open bar.

May’s numbers don’t lie: the prediction market platform hit $1 billion in monthly volumes again, proving crypto’s degenerate gambling arm still prints money when incentives align. Who needs fundamentals when you’ve got yield farming 2.0?

This isn’t just a rebound—it’s a middle finger to regulators who thought they’d starve out the crypto casino. Pro tip: when you ban something in finance, you usually just create a better-funded black market.

Compared to one of its competitors, Kalshi, Polygon is on an expansion arc. Kalshi’s monthly volumes are still around $14M, with a downward trend. Kalshi offers a similar mix of events and sports meetings as Polymarket, though it is still trying to grow its audience. 

The platform has only vaguely hinted at an airdrop, but has left the betting markets to recover and find their niche. The current volume expansion does not match the new wallet inflows, but reflects higher-value bets and more appealing market pairs. As of May, it retains around 30K daily active users, with closely watched whales and top traders.

Despite not returning to October 2024 levels, Polymarket volume remains at a higher baseline, with over 10X the activity compared to Q2 2024. The app aims for organic growth and development, recently tapping Kevin Shay, former lead designer for Coinbase and Lyft.

Polymarket returns to political bets

The initial post-election recovery of Polymarket came from large-scale sports events taking the forefront. In 2025, the platform gradually returned to politics, election results, and current events. 

The NBA Championship pair still has $2B in volumes, leading all markets. However, election markets run up volumes as high as $85M in the case of the Polish presidential election market. 

Polymarket also created a newly active Breaking News section, where bet volumes range between $20K and $3M, depending on the weight of the issue. The Breaking News section also boosts the platform’s social media strategy, as the betting pairs often successfully front-run some of the news.

Recently, even Ethereum’s founder Vitalik Buterin mentioned he checks Polymarket on the potential resolution of current events. 

Some of the growth comes from highly speculative odds with low volumes and higher volatility of the ‘yes’ and ‘no’ tokens. 

The additional success of Polymarket stems from its adoption of Solana, accepting USDC from the growing supply on the solana chain. The effect of USDC may be felt in the coming months as the token is more widely adopted. 

Currently, Polymarket carries around $127M in total value locked, with $37.53M in DEX trading volume for its betting tokens. It is the main app still keeping the Polygon chain active, as the network carries under $1B in total value locked. 

Interest in prediction markets is generally rising, though Polymarket has only a few competitors. The integration of AI with prediction markets is still in its early stages, or just an idea. Even X has hinted at integrating some FORM of prediction pairs, though not giving specific names or a timeline. 

Despite the general demand for predictions, crypto betting markets are one of the smallest sectors. Prediction tokens have a total market cap under $700M, with most trading at extremely low volumes. Polymarket has chosen to remain tokenless for years, while relying on volumes and real demand for its growth.

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