‘The Future is Embedding Myriad as a Protocol’: Co-Founder

Prediction markets are making inroads on the mainstream, with Polymarket set to relaunch in the U.S. and Robinhood preparing to expand its offering globally. But, says Myriad Co-Founder and President Farokh Sarmad, people need to think bigger.

“For us, the future is embedding Myriad as a protocol,” he told the audience at Token2049’s prediction markets symposium Predictify Everything. “So, prediction markets at a protocol layer everywhere we can.”

Sarmad likened the ambitious plan to crypto payment infrastructure firm MoonPay’s expansion. “MoonPay got big because they started embedding this crypto on-ramp/off-ramp, everywhere they could—and that’s our goal,” he said. “So the day you see prediction markets odds live on national television, on CNBC, on Fox, in The Washington Post while you’re reading it, I think that’s where we’re headed.”

Myriad, a prediction market launched by Decrypt’s parent company DASTAN, recently hit $18.5 million in USDC trading volume with over five million trades on the platform, just weeks after blasting through the $10 million threshold.

The platform is growing “organically,” Myriad Co-Founder and CEO Loxley Fernandes told attendees. “Our users are real, highly engaged users,” he noted, pointing out that the platform charges fees on transactional volume in order to disincentivize “bad behavior, wash trading or false optics.”

The fees charged go to liquidity providers on Myriad, he explained. As a result, he said, “Our content creation team is not only incentivized, but required to create event contracts that are exciting, relevant and contextually relevant to the user.” Myriad provides users with “on-brand, relevant markets that we know that they’ll engage with, and our conversion rates are higher because of it,” Fernandes said.

Myriad has also recently launched perpetual sentiment markets, which pose questions such as “Up or Down?” and will “live forever” on the platform. In just a few weeks, the market has gone from a “silly game” to driving over $760,000 in transactional volume. “It seems silly, but it turns out it’s a lot more productive of a social experiment than we even imagined it would be,” Fernandes said.

As well as social experiments, prediction markets are also playing host to technological innovations, with “two or three” AI agents already trading on Myriad, Sarmad said. “I don’t know if AI is going to have an edge on humans,” he added.

He pointed out that human traders can benefit from having inside information, and that AI “will never be able to predict the unpredictable,” citing the example of Eric Adams’ decision to drop out of the New York City mayoral race. “Maybe I’m being overly bullish on humans,” he joked.

Myriad is taking the “long path” to scaling, Fernandes said, emphasizing the platform’s focus on organic growth over artificially inflated metrics. “There’s so many opportunities for scale from this niche asset class of financialized information to real capital markets,” he said.

Sarmad echoed his optimistic view. “What we’re doing with getting our prediction markets into the faces and hands of everyone, and it’s seamless—that’s where prediction markets are going to go,” he said.