If you’ve ever felt prediction markets were rigged, boring, or focused only on U.S. elections, you’re not alone. Ali, the founder of XO Markets, watched one of his “sure-win” bets get reversed by an obscure Discord ruling and decided to build something better. The result is a modular prediction platform that runs as a sovereign rollup on top of Celestia and lets anyone trade their convictions on any topic, from Bitcoin whales to pop-culture showdowns.

Why Traditional Prediction Markets Fail

• Resolution attacks: centralized moderators can overrule obvious outcomes.

• Limited market selection: most sites revolve around headline politics or celebrity gossip.

• No user ownership: only the platform (or a handful of KOLs) can create markets, and traders see none of the fees.

Enter the "Conviction Market"

XO Markets replaces the old model with a decentralized prediction-trading experience that’s social, fair, and creator-owned:

Resolution

• Old: Manual, opaque decisions that can be disputed.

• XO: AI-assisted resolution backed by human fallback for transparency.

Market Creation

• Old: Only the platform (or a few influencers) can list new markets.

• XO: Any user can launch a market. True “DIY markets.”

Fee Distribution

• Old: 100 % of fees go to the platform.

• XO: Trading fees are shared with the market’s creator.

Chain Access

• Old: Single-chain silos.

• XO: Cross-chain access (Celestia, Cosmos, Solana, and more).

$500K Backing & Alpha Rollout

In a recent pre-seed round, XO raised $500K from Delphi Ventures, Cyber Fund, and angels like Nick White (COO at Celestia). That cash is powering a three-phase alpha testnet rollout:

1. Phase 1 (done): one flagship market to test the UX.

2. Phase 2 (now): fresh markets added daily.

3. Phase 3 (soon): every active user can launch a conviction market and collect creator fees.

Why Celestia Matters

By launching as a sovereign rollup on Celestia, XO market avoids the congestion and gas spikes that plague monolithic chains. Data availability lives on Celestia, while execution happens in XO’s dedicated environment, keeping fees low and throughput high, crucial for micro-bets and social trading.

Future Roadmap: AI Agents & DIY Markets

Beyond daily markets, the team plans to integrate AI agents that “trade on your behalf.” Tell the bot “I’m bullish on Layer-2s” and it will allocate positions automatically. More importantly, once Phase 3 unlocks, you can spin up a market in seconds (do-it yourself) and earn a slice of the volume whenever others join the fray.

Final Thoughts

In a space dominated by centralized or single-issue prediction sites, XO Markets offers a refreshing alternative: a decentralized prediction trading arena where anyone can earn crypto by predicting bold ideas. Whether you want to wager on a Bitcoin whale move, the next viral meme coin, or your favorite streamer’s subscriber milestone, XO’s conviction markets let you trade your convictions—and finally profit from all those hot takes.

Ready to try Prediction Market 2.0? Jump into the alpha testnet, place a few small bets, and see how it feels when your opinions have real skin in the game.

Thanks for reading folks!

We hope this article helped you stay up-to-date with the latest developments in the Cosmos ecosystem.

Disclaimer

This article is intended to educate readers about certain topics and should not be considered financial advice in any way.