Gate, a Panama-based cryptocurrency exchange, has entered the prediction market business with a new infrastructure product called Event Contracts Builder, launched in August as part of its Gate DexBuilder platform.
The tool lets brokers, Web3 applications, and trading platforms integrate prediction-market functionality into their own products without building the backend themselves. 'These companies can quickly integrate prediction market functionality [and] not have to spend a ton of tech resources … to build the entire infra behind it,' said Jason Fung, head of Gate DexBuilder.
The move comes as prediction markets — platforms where users wager on real-world outcomes — have exploded in popularity, emerging as a new mechanism for gauging public sentiment. Kalshi and Polymarket currently dominate the space, and a growing number of consumer-facing businesses have begun folding their market data and event contracts into their own apps.
Gate's entry carries a notable wrinkle: the exchange first joined this ecosystem as a Polymarket partner. Earlier this year it integrated Polymarket Builder, a tool allowing exchanges and apps to offer Polymarket's existing markets within their own products. Fung said Gate was the first exchange to integrate it — an experience he credits with shaping Gate's decision to build a competing product of its own.
Alongside the builder tool, Gate has launched a $3 million grant program to support companies developing event-contract products. Fung said the funding comes entirely from Gate, not outside investors or public money, and can be used to cover development costs. Selected builders may also receive technical assistance, marketing support, and media promotion. The program remains in its early stages, with Gate still reviewing its first group of applicants.
Fung joined Gate in July after a career that spanned media and gaming — including stints at BroadbandTV and Azubu — followed by five years in China working for Alibaba and ByteDance on TikTok Global. He entered crypto during the 2021–22 boom-and-bust cycle before moving to more established roles at the Sei Foundation and AP Finance, the U.S. arm of Bybit. Gate itself is a 13-year-old, fully remote company with hubs in Hong Kong, Japan, Dubai, and Malta, plus a North American entity, Gate U.S.
The numbers come first: this is a $3 million bet financed by a private company's own balance sheet, not a subsidy extracted from taxpayers or mandated by regulators. That distinction matters. Prediction markets have drawn scrutiny from officials wary of unregulated betting, yet the capital driving their expansion here is coming from firms competing for market share, not from government grants.
Gate's willingness to challenge its former partner Polymarket also underscores a basic truth of free enterprise: yesterday's collaborator is today's competitor when the incentives shift. Capital rewards clear rules and open competition, and prediction markets — however unconventional as an asset class — are proving to be a real-time, price-discovery alternative to slower, bureaucratic measures of public opinion. For now, the market is deciding who wins on its own terms.
