Ex-Polymarket team launches onchain prediction markets with $15M round
Union Square Ventures leads funding for The Clearing Company, building regulated, onchain prediction markets
OA_Creation/Shutterstock modified by Blockworks
Former team members behind prediction market platform Polymarket have launched a new venture, The Clearing Company. It secured a $15 million seed round led by Union Square Ventures, according to an announcement on Wednesday.
Other investors include Haun Ventures, Variant, Coinbase Ventures, Compound, Rubik, Earl Grey, Cursor Capital, Asylum and several angel backers.
Co-founder Toni Gemayel emphasized that while prediction markets have existed for centuries, the internet age makes their collective intelligence more powerful. “Polls are too slow and rife with bias,” he wrote, adding that markets incentivize honesty because being wrong carries a real cost.
Scaling, he said, will require making markets “fun to create, seamless to trade and supported by novel structures that unlock liquidity.”
The startup aims to build onchain, permissionless prediction markets designed to meet regulatory standards while remaining accessible to retail users. Prediction markets allow participants to trade contracts tied to real-world outcomes, producing collective forecasts with financial incentives for accuracy.
While platforms such as Polymarket have operated in regulatory gray areas, The Clearing Company suggests that it is positioning itself as a compliant alternative with transparent infrastructure and liquidity mechanisms.
Union Square Ventures, which has previously invested in Web3 firms including Coinbase and Uniswap, is betting that a regulated approach could make decentralized forecasting tools mainstream.
The company has not disclosed a launch timeline for its platform but emphasized its focus on designing products that balance simplicity with compliance.
This article was generated with the assistance of AI and reviewed by editor Jeffrey Albus before publication.
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