Prediction Markets and DAOs Are Cousins, Says Syndicate Co-Founder

Prediction markets and decentralized autonomous organizations, or DAOs, may be closer cousins than most people think, according to Syndicate co-founder Ian Lee. 

There are strong similarities between the two, as both are fundamentally about blending social behavior and money, despite what terms suggest, he told Decrypt. (Disclosure: Decrypt’s parent company, DASTAN, operates a prediction market called Myriad.)

“In the abstract, [DAOs are] about coordinating human capital and financial capital at the same time,” Lee explained. “So, prediction markets that coordinate capital as well as human intelligence, I think of those as a DAO.”

Lee, whose company helped create once-prominent DAOs like ConstitutionDAO and Nike’s .SWOOSH, acknowledged that DAO die-hards might not fully embrace his comparison. Still, he believes it highlights how crypto-native labels can sometimes stifle innovation.

Lee prefers to think of prediction markets not just as “betting market things,” but as “social financial networks” used to coordinate human intelligence across sometimes thousands of individuals to predict outcomes.

Syndicate itself has evolved its focus from solely providing DAO infrastructure to enabling communities to launch their own blockchains through so-called appchains.

These days, the on-chain business structures—where control is spread out rather than hierarchical—are often viewed as a pandemic-era memory. Back then, DAOs were everywhere: Snoop Dogg joined a music-focused DAO, Peter Thiel backed investment collectives, and ConstitutionDAO famously tried, and failed, to buy a copy of the U.S. Constitution at auction. 

DAOs still underpin most popular DeFi projects, such as decentralized exchange Uniswap, and infrastructure like Arbitrum’s Ethereum layer-2 scaling network. But compared to prediction markets, one could argue that there’s a lack of visible momentum.

Kalshi, for instance, recently surpassed $1 billion in monthly volume, despite looming regulatory threats. Meanwhile, Polymarket saw 226,000 active traders last month, generating $1 billion in trading volume, according to a Dune dashboard.

These platforms allow users to bet on a vast array of future events, from the outcome of political elections to whether Taylor Swift will announce a pregnancy. In that sense, the next chapter for DeFi may not be written in governance forums, but in the odds of tomorrow’s news.