Melee Raises $3.5M to Launch ‘Viral Prediction Markets’ Without Gatekeepers

Melee, a new prediction market startup that says speculation and betting should be as open as online discussion, has raised $3.5 million from Variant, DBA and a group of angel investors to roll out what it calls “Viral Markets.”Crypto native companies have witnessed the runaway success of Polymarket, the digital asset betting platform that grew to prominence during the U.S. election campaigns. Other novel projects to emerge include ‘Forecast Markets,’ a type of dated futures contracts launched on Clearmatics’ Autonity blockchain.Melee, which allows anyone to easily create a market on anything, sees prediction markets evolving alongside the internet like other types of social networks, following dimensions like media type, social graphs, interest graphs, and more, VC firm Variant said in an email.“We see prediction markets not as a winner-take-all market but as a burgeoning category, much like social networks, where there can be many winners. Social networks reshaped the way we create and consume information and media,” Variant said. “Unlike existing platforms that rely on centralized teams or professional market makers, Melee uses a pricing mechanism that rewards traders for being early and correct,” Variant added.The design also aims to attract creators. Influencers, podcasters or streamers can open markets tied to their audience’s interests and earn revenue from trading activity without taking on reputational risk. A fictional example might be a streamer launching a market on whether a blockbuster video game release will hit its target date, allowing fans to speculate directly alongside the conversation.For traders, the appeal lies in asymmetric upside. Entering a market early means lower costs of exposure, and payouts rise as more participants join and the outcome becomes clearer.The project’s team includes veterans of Solana, Avalanche, Monad, SIG, Microsoft and Amazon. The long-term vision, according to the announcement, is to create “humanity’s platform for valuing beliefs,” where millions of markets continuously reflect shifting cultural sentiment in real time.