Polymarket, a decentralized information marketplace, has closed a $4 million funding round led by Polychain Capital.
Announced on Monday, the round was joined by some of the industry’s most well-known advocates and investors such as former AngelList CEO Naval Ravikant, former Coinbase CTO Balaji Srinivasan, CoinShares CSO Meltem Demirors among others.
The startup said the investment will help it move to stage 2 of its beta release, which will remove technical complexities and make it easier for mainstream users to onboard and trade on the platform.
Polymarket is designed to let users place cryptocurrency bets on hotly debated topics, ranging from politics and health through to business and science.
The platform’s trading activity is turned into actionable insights and can also help hold to account those pumping disinformation in the news cycle, according to the announcement.
In essence, Polymarket allows those with an “educated opinion” to profit from correct statements and aggregates the data into what the company calls a “collective knowledge.”
Platform users can cross-check market activity against current news to better determine the truth of a given subject or statement, Polymarket said.
“One of the biggest problems with social media and discourse on the internet today is the lack of accountability,” Polymarket founder Shayne Coplan said. “Everyone has an opinion and isn’t afraid to share it.”
“At the moment there’s little downside to being wrong; this makes it really hard for regular people to discern what’s fact and what’s fiction,” Coplan added. “2020 has showcased just how bad the consequences of this can be.”
In the three months since its beta launch, Polymarket is said to have seen over $1 million in trading volume.