World opened its standalone prediction market at world.xyz on September 9, 2026. The launch granted access to more than 1 million users who had joined the waitlist. Until now, the protocol lived inside Phantom, where it has powered the wallet’s prediction market tab since July. Consequently, the new site marks World’s first direct, public-facing product on Solana.
The scale at launch stands out. According to World, users have created more than 150,000 markets since the Phantom debut. Those markets span sports, crypto, politics, finance, economics, and culture. Meanwhile, Chainlink handles the data and resolution layer, which removes human judgment from settlement. That combination gives Solana a fully onchain answer to Polymarket and Kalshi.
NEW: @world_xyz launches its official prediction market platform on @Solana for over 1 million waitlisted users, powered by Chainlink.
— Chainlink (@chainlink) September 9, 2026
Hundreds of markets across sports, crypto, politics, culture, and more.
Chainlink. The prediction market oracle. https://t.co/R5hsiXWgXw pic.twitter.com/msTYd71xU3
What went live on September 9
The standalone platform launched with hundreds of active markets. Sports coverage leads the lineup, and it includes every NFL regular-season game, seven soccer leagues, and Formula 1. Politics markets cover the 2026 U.S. midterm elections. Additionally, finance markets track Federal Reserve rate decisions, and crypto markets track price outcomes for major assets.
Every contract uses a binary yes/no structure. Prices move between $0 and $1 based on demand, so a $0.65 price implies a 65 percent chance. Winning contracts pay out $1 each at resolution. This format mirrors Kalshi and Polymarket, which keeps the learning curve short for new traders.
World has already outlined its next categories. The team plans up/down markets on individual equities. Commodity markets will follow for gold, silver, oil, natural gas, and computing capacity. Notably, weather markets for major cities also sit on the roadmap. Each addition depends on Chainlink delivering the relevant data feed onchain.
🌎 the world is back
— world (@world_xyz) September 11, 2026
💬 traffic is now at 100%
🔮 rumor says a big surprise is coming soon
💰 for everyone trading on world https://t.co/r4d7wGYym2 pic.twitter.com/cg7mP1DLz7
A non-custodial design where positions live in the wallet
World runs as a non-custodial protocol rather than a hosted exchange. Users open positions directly from their Solana wallet and never hand assets to a central operator. Instead, the protocol routes every order to Solana-based liquidity providers. Funds only move when a user enters a market.
Each position becomes an SPL token held in the wallet. As a result, traders can transfer or sell a position before the market resolves. Settlement happens in CASH, the dollar-backed stablecoin Phantom introduced for in-wallet payments. When a market closes, winning positions redeem automatically without a manual claim step.
Ramzy Ali, head of DeFi at the Solana Foundation, framed the design as an ecosystem win. He said the platform introduces “a new asset class to Solana” while “keeping 100% of the liquidity onchain.” That point matters for the network. Earlier, Phantom’s prediction markets pulled liquidity from Kalshi through DFlow middleware. World replaced that setup with liquidity that never leaves Solana.
How Chainlink resolves markets without a human panel
Resolution is the hardest problem in prediction markets. Older platforms rely on human committees or token-holder votes to confirm outcomes. Those systems create dispute windows that can stretch for days. World took a different path and made Chainlink its primary oracle infrastructure from day one.
Two Chainlink products do the work. Chainlink Data Streams delivers low-latency, verifiable real-world data to Solana. That includes crypto prices, match results, and macro data points. The Chainlink Runtime Environment, or CRE, then orchestrates the settlement workflow. Once the data confirms an outcome, CRE triggers the payout transaction onchain. Importantly, no person signs off on the result.
Johann Eid, chief business officer at Chainlink Labs, tied the waitlist size to demand for this model. He described World’s integration as part of a broader move away from “human-driven legacy oracle solutions.” In his view, automated resolution positions prediction markets to “scale to trillions in volume.” Chainlink already secures roughly 70 percent of DeFi and has enabled more than $31 trillion in transaction value.
Why Phantom distribution changed the launch math
Most new prediction markets start with zero users and buy attention. World started inside Phantom instead. The wallet serves more than 20 million active users across iOS, Android, and desktop. Therefore, World reached a mass audience without a separate app download.
That head start explains the 150,000-market figure. It also explains how the waitlist crossed 1 million before the standalone site existed. Pedro Miranda leads consumer at the Solana Foundation. He called prediction markets “one of the most powerful applications you can build on a high-performance blockchain.” Fast block times and low fees suit rapid contract trading and instant settlement.
The team behind World remains anonymous. The project circulated in Solana circles under the “Trade Everything” tagline since late 2023. Furthermore, its identity only surfaced in late June through a legal disclosure on Phantom’s site. For a protocol handling real money, that opacity remains a fair question for users.
The market World is entering
Prediction markets have grown quickly over the past year. Pew Research tracked combined monthly volume on Kalshi and Polymarket. That figure rose from under $5 billion in September 2025 to roughly $24 billion in April 2026. For comparison, legal U.S. sportsbooks averaged about $14 billion per month in 2025.
Sports drives most of that activity. On Kalshi, sports accounts for 80 percent of volume. On Polymarket, sports takes 39 percent, while politics and crypto combine for another 52 percent. World’s launch lineup targets all three categories at once. The NFL season and the midterms give it two high-volume events in its first quarter.
However, World faces a structural difference from its rivals. Kalshi operates as a CFTC-regulated exchange, and Polymarket has pursued U.S. licensing through its own acquisitions. World runs as an open protocol with no custodian and no central operator. That design offers censorship resistance and full transparency. In contrast, it also raises questions about jurisdiction and access that regulators have not yet answered.
For Solana, the outcome is already meaningful. The network now hosts a native prediction market with seven-figure signups, onchain liquidity, and automated resolution. Whether World can convert waitlist interest into sustained volume remains the open question. Its first NFL Sunday and the November midterms will provide the answer.
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