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Ascend is built on the idea that markets work best when outcomes can be traded freely, continuously, and at scale. Outcome prices are signals. They tell you what people collectively think will happen. When these signals are liquid and actively traded, they become one of the most reliable forms of market intelligence you can find. Prediction markets have already proven this. They beat polls in elections. They anticipate macro data before official releases. They price geopolitical risk faster than any other instrument. Despite being more accurate, they’re limited to narrow participation with constrained, no-scale design. Ascend changes this forever.

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The Timing

Why now? Four things have aligned.

Perpetual infrastructure is mature

Platforms like Hyperliquid, dYdX, and Vertex process billions in daily volume with sub second settlement. These systems already handle leveraged trading at scale. The same infrastructure can power outcome markets.

Traders already bet on events, just indirectly

Think the Fed will cut rates? You trade Fed funds futures. Think oil will spike after OPEC meets? You trade crude futures. Traders already bet on outcomes through proxies. Outcome perpetuals let you trade the event itself. Will the Fed cut? Yes or no. Direct.

Leverage unlocks capital efficiency

On Polymarket, betting 10,000 USDC means locking 10,000 USDC until resolution. With leverage, you put up 1,000 USDC as margin for the same exposure. The rest stays liquid.

Demand for outcome exposure keeps growing

Elections, tariffs, central bank decisions, earnings. Every major event moves markets. Traders want direct exposure. Right now they use proxies like sector ETFs or options. Outcome perpetuals are the native instrument.

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What Is Broken Today

Prediction markets work. But they hit real limits.
Presidential elections get millions in volume. But a Fed rate decision next month? A company hitting its earnings target? These markets exist on Polymarket and Kalshi, but orderbooks are thin. Try placing 50,000 USDC and slippage destroys your entry. Professional traders cannot deploy real size, so they stay away. The signal never forms.
You buy YES at 0.50 because you think there is an 80% chance. You might be right. But that capital is stuck until the event resolves. Could be 6 months. Could be a year. And if new information pushes your conviction to 95%, there is no efficient way to add exposure. Binary payoffs cap what you can do with strong conviction.
In traditional markets, you hedge. You scale in and out. You react to new information. In prediction markets, you bet and wait. News shifts probability by 20 points? You sell at whatever the thin orderbook offers, or you hold and hope.
Market makers and quant traders make markets efficient. They provide liquidity, tighten spreads, and arbitrage mispricings. But without leverage and proper risk tools, they stick to traditional derivatives. Prediction markets lose the participants who would make them most accurate.
The result: prediction markets function as passive betting pools when they could be active trading venues.

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The Endgame

Prediction perpetuals are not a niche product. They are a new asset class. Every market satisfies the same question: What do people think will happen? Elections. Central bank moves. Earnings. Geopolitics. Climate policy. Court rulings. Tech milestones. Today, these views are scattered across polls, surveys, options flow, and commentary. None of it trades cleanly. None of it scales. Ascend changes that.
The goal is not to build a better prediction market. The goal is to build a global market for expectations.
A system where:
Any outcome can be priced
Any view can be expressed as a position
Liquidity flows toward conviction
Better market design produces better forecasts

Next: Core Concepts

Understand how outcome probabilities work on Ascend