A new report by Surf argues that Polymarket effectively operated as two separate venues in the first half of 2026: its international market and the CFTC-regulated Polymarket US. The study is based on 787 million deduplicated trades and 1,733,011 wallets on the international market from January through June, along with market-level data from the US venue. According to the report, Polymarket US grew from 5% of the international market’s monthly volume in January to 47% in June, then reached 67% in July. The report also says fee generation was heavily concentrated in high-turnover categories. Sports and crypto accounted for 98% of roughly $184 million in gross fees on the international market in the first half, with crypto producing about $96.3 million in fees and sports about $83.5 million. User counts and trading activity were sharply misaligned: retail wallets made up roughly 90% of users, but bots and professional traders together generated about 80% of taker volume. Bot-like wallets alone represented 5.9% of wallets while handling about two-thirds of volume. Surf further found that Polymarket’s user acquisition did not depend on a single breakout market, and that category-level loyalty was weaker than platform-level retention. Roughly 51% to 57% of monthly active wallets returned the following month, though many switched into different categories. In profitability terms, bot wallets posted an aggregate net gain of about $108 million, yet only 27% of those wallets were profitable, and just 146 wallets maintained positive cash flow for six straight months.

Prediction markets are starting to look less like standalone destinations and more like financial infrastructure that other products can plug into. Moves by Binance, Coinbase, Interactive Brokers and Robinhood point in the same direction: rather than trying to build another Polymarket, major platforms are integrating market access, routing and settlement into broader trading interfaces. That shift changes the industry’s center of gravity. The focus is no longer only on where users place a bet, but on how prediction assets are discovered, compared, routed, priced and eventually packaged into more complex financial products. The article uses Fortune as an early example of that transition, outlining a stack that spans market aggregation, liquidity access, derivatives, AI-assisted execution and user incentives. The piece also argues that prediction markets may follow a path similar to DeFi after the AMM era, where the next wave was led by aggregators, execution networks and market infrastructure rather than by more venues alone. At the same time, it notes that several constraints remain unresolved: market depth, event resolution standards, regulation and the gap between AI systems that can summarize information and those that can produce durable trading alpha.

Crypto trading terminals cleared more than $1 billion in daily volume on Sept. 2, the first time the sector has crossed that mark since January 2025, according to a Dune chart published by analyst Adam on X. The composition of that volume has shifted sharply. GMGN led the field, and most of its flow now comes from Robinhood Chain, Robinhood’s two-month-old network for tokenized equities, rather than from Solana or BSC. DefiLlama showed a lower total for the same day because it uses a narrower classification, but both datasets pointed to the same trend: terminal activity is rising again and GMGN is out front. The rebound also appeared across decentralized exchanges more broadly, with 30-day DEX volume climbing, Robinhood Chain setting fresh records, and Uniswap V4 overtaking Uniswap V3 by 30-day volume. At the same time, major crypto assets and tokens tied to active trading venues posted strong gains, with Bitcoin above $81,000 and UNI, HYPE, PUMP and JUP all moving higher over the 30-day window.

GTE has opened early registration for its MegaETH-based decentralized exchange, giving users points for reserving a username, following the project on X and Instagram, and downloading a card. BitRobot said it has launched a points system for its decentralized robotics network focused on embodied AI, with five subnet projects available to contribute to. Melee, a Solana-based prediction market platform, has also gone live with a beta and is distributing OG badges through account setup and social tasks.

Polymarket has restored normal operations after repeated read delays affected open-order queries on its central limit order book, or CLOB, trading system. The issue had led the platform to pause trading multiple times and switch the market into a cancel-only mode while it handled the fault. According to the service status update cited by Odaily, the incident was marked "Resolved" at 18:47 GMT+8 on Aug. 31. The platform now lists its CLOB, web interface, account access, prediction market data, on-chain settlement, and perpetual-contract related services as "Operational." The update indicates that the system has returned to normal status across those core functions after the earlier disruption.

Prediction market platform Polymarket suffered a major outage on Aug. 31, temporarily stopping trading across the platform. According to the company’s status page, the issue began at around 6:30 UTC and affected the Trading API, or central limit order book (CLOB), with delayed responses when reading open orders. As a result, trading was fully paused. The website itself remained accessible, and market data could still be viewed, but users were unable to place orders during the disruption. Polymarket said it was working on a fix and set a target of restoring trading no later than 10:00 UTC. Before full service resumes, the platform plans to enter a 15-minute cancel-only mode, allowing users to cancel orders but not submit new ones. The company added that its other systems, including the website, data services, and authentication, were operating normally during the incident.

Hyperliquid has taken a commanding lead in the decentralized derivatives space, holding a 58% market share in perpetual DEX trading over the last 30 days. The platform processed $245 billion in monthly trading volume, with open interest reaching as high as $13 billion. Beyond crypto-native assets, Hyperliquid has pushed into tokenized real-world assets (RWA); at times, its stock and commodity perpetual contracts have represented more than 50% of its trading volume. Launched in 2023, the exchange runs on a custom Layer 1 blockchain designed specifically for order book trading. It uses a central limit order book (CLOB) model that enables sub-second execution and low gas fees, appealing to active traders. Cumulative trading volume has reached approximately $2.9 trillion, and revenue has climbed into the hundreds of millions of dollars. The 58% share and $245 billion monthly volume illustrate the scale edge Hyperliquid currently holds in perp DEX trading. These figures underscore the platform's competitive strength in liquidity and execution quality, according to a report from CryptoBriefing first relayed by Techub News.

Real-world asset markets kept expanding during the Aug. 21 to Aug. 27 tracking window, with on-chain RWA market capitalization reaching $38.7 billion and total holders climbing to 2.952 million, according to the figures cited in the report. Stablecoins also grew in scale, with total market capitalization rebounding to $303.04 billion and monthly transfer volume rising 20.33% from a month earlier to $6.49 trillion, even as monthly active addresses slipped 1.24% to 52.87 million. The report described that split as a market where larger holders are rebalancing frequently while smaller users are staying on the sidelines. Regulatory developments came from three major jurisdictions. In the U.S., the Financial Accounting Standards Board proposed guidance on when some digital assets, including stablecoins, may qualify as cash equivalents under GAAP, with comments due by Nov. 19, 2026. In the U.K., the government is moving to give the Bank of England a secondary legal objective to support innovation in digital currency and payments. In Japan, regulators are preparing to ease limits on large-value stablecoin payments, potentially allowing single transactions above 1 million yen. On the corporate and product side, The Wall Street Journal reported that JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo and Santander are working toward a global stablecoin alliance. Coinbase has launched tokenized stocks natively on Base under its B20 standard, while Franklin Templeton, Bitwise, Bitfinex Securities, Revolut, Fasset and Entropy.io also posted fresh RWA and stablecoin developments.