How does a society know what it knows?
From weight guessing games at the market to political prediction markets, and then to short-cycle Event Contracts that let people participate on-chain at any time—event contracts have gone through over a century of continuous evolution. At their core, nothing has changed: converting people’s different judgments about the future into prices, and then settling via the outcome. What has changed are the kinds of events covered by the market, the participation thresholds, the trading cycle, and the underlying infrastructure.
Looking back along this line, Polymarket turned prediction markets into a global internet product, while TurboFlow brought event contracts further into an on-chain trading environment designed for everyday traders. Though they operate at different stages and take different product forms, together they have helped “trading the future” move from an economic experiment to a mainstream product.
I. 1907–1945: from “wisdom of the crowd” to price discovery
The starting point of the idea behind event contracts can be traced back to 1907. British statistician Francis Galton observed that when a group of people independently estimated a bull’s weight at a fair, their collective judgment was very close to the true result. This story was later summarized as “the wisdom of the crowd”: when participants have different information, and their judgments can form relatively independently, the aggregated result is often closer to facts than any single individual.
Later, economists began to think further: if market prices can aggregate information about supply and demand for goods, can they also aggregate information about future events?
In 1945, Friedrich Hayek systematically explained the information function of the price mechanism in (The Use of Knowledge in Society). In the real world, knowledge is dispersed among countless individuals, while market prices can compress these scattered judgments and information into continuously changing signals. Following this line of thought, markets can not only price goods, but also aggregate participants’ judgments about future events through trading.
Event contracts apply this logic to future outcomes. Suppose a contract on “whether a certain event will occur” is currently priced at $0.62, and it is agreed that if the event occurs it will be settled at $1, and if it does not occur it will settle to zero. In that case, $0.62 is generally understood as a probability signal from the market about that outcome. Participants take responsibility for their judgments with their capital, and new information continuously enters the price through trading.
Prices are still influenced by liquidity, participant structure, market sentiment, and trading rules—so they are better viewed as real-time market judgments rather than absolutely accurate probabilities. This point runs through the subsequent development of event contracts.
II. 1988: Iowa Electronic Markets turned theory into an experiment
A key starting point for modern prediction markets came in 1988. Researchers at the University of Iowa created the Iowa Political Stock Market, which later developed into the Iowa Electronic Markets (Iowa Electronic Markets, IEM). Through contracts tied to U.S. presidential election results, they tested whether linking predictions to election outcomes could improve prediction quality.
In its early days, the market was small and the amount participants could put in was strictly limited. It proved an important point: even with a limited number of participants, if they are willing to trade based on new information, prices can still form a collectively meaningful judgment.
In 1992, IEM received a “no action” letter from the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), allowing it to continue operating under small-scale, research-oriented conditions. Event contracts first gained a relatively stable regulatory space. In the years that followed, IEM’s prices were often used to compare with opinion polls, and this also pushed prediction markets into the mainstream research view of economics.
III. 1999–2013: Intrade proved the commercial value, but also exposed regulatory boundaries
After academic experiments, commercial platforms began to appear. TradeSports and Intrade expanded tradable events to elections, economics, entertainment, and international affairs, making them available to a broader range of users.
Intrade’s value came under attention during multiple U.S. presidential elections. The media, researchers, and the public began to treat market prices as another signal beyond opinion polls. With more capital and participants, price discovery became more active—and for the first time, prediction markets got close to a mainstream internet product.
Regulatory issues then became magnified. In 2012, the CFTC accused Intrade of offering unregistered options trading in commodities to U.S. users. The platform later stopped service and shut down in 2013. The lesson left by Intrade was very clear: event contracts have real demand, and long-term growth requires regulatory, clearing, and market infrastructure that matches trading scale.
In the same period, event contracts also touched boundaries involving ethics and the public interest. In 2003, a Policy Analysis Market program funded by the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) tried to use market prediction to track political and security changes in the Middle East. The project was quickly canceled due to public controversy. This episode reminded the industry that whether a contract can be traded also depends on underlying asset design, the public interest, and social acceptance.
IV. 2014–2020: Restricted markets continue, and crypto infrastructure starts to mature
After Intrade shut down, restricted markets such as IEM and PredictIt continued to offer trading in political events. They preserved the research and product spark of prediction markets, though user scale, single-bet amounts, and the number of markets remained constrained.
On the other side, stablecoins, smart contracts, on-chain wallets, and automated market making are gradually maturing. Event contracts begin to have a new technological foundation: global users can trade within a unified network, rules and settlement processes can be written into smart contracts, and markets can run 24/7.
This sets the stage for the next growth wave. Prediction markets began to shift from “a website maintained by a single institution” to composable, verifiable on-chain markets.
V. 2020–2025: Polymarket takes prediction markets global
Polymarket launched in 2020, offering event markets around themes such as politics, macroeconomics, technology, sports, and culture, using stablecoins and blockchain infrastructure. Users trade “Yes” or “No” shares; prices move with supply and demand. Once the event outcome is determined, settlement is completed.
The changes it brings first show up in distribution. Prediction markets shift from regional products to global internet products, and market prices can be cited in real time by the media, researchers, and social platforms. During the 2024 U.S. presidential election, Polymarket gained unprecedented public attention, and event contracts became a high-frequency data source in global news discussions for the first time.
Polymarket’s growth also came with compliance adjustments. In 2022, the CFTC reached a settlement with it over providing unregistered on-chain event contracts and the platform, requiring it to address markets that did not meet the requirements. After that, Polymarket continued building a path into regulated markets.
In 2025, Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange, announced that it would invest up to $2 billion in Polymarket and plans to distribute its event-driven data. This partnership is symbolic: event probabilities formed through market trading are beginning to be treated as data products that can be served to clients by traditional financial infrastructure.
Polymarket completed an important migration in the history of event contracts—from academic research, niche communities, and gray areas, into mainstream views of global finance and media.
VI. Kalshi and the expansion of U.S. regulated markets
Parallel to on-chain paths, Kalshi started from regulated exchanges. In 2020, it became a designated contract market registered with the CFTC, launching event contracts around outcomes such as economic data, weather, politics, and sports.
In 2024, a U.S. federal district court vacated the CFTC’s ban decision regarding Kalshi election contracts. In May 2025, the CFTC withdrew its appeal, ending the case. This drove rapid expansion of the U.S. event contract market and also sparked new federal and state regulatory discussions.
Entering 2026, event contracts have formed multiple parallel routes: regulated centralized markets, on-chain prediction markets for global users, and short-cycle products designed around price changes. Different products correspond to different types of information, participation methods, and risk structures.
VII. From “predicting public events” to “trading market outcomes”
The product boundaries of event contracts are expanding. Early markets mainly answered questions like “who will win the election” and “whether a policy will be passed.” New products can also answer questions like “after a specified time, will the BTC price be higher or lower than the current level?” Both types of contracts turn uncertain outcomes into clear conditions and settle after expiration according to pre-published rules.
They aggregate different information. Political and macro event markets absorb news, research, and public information, and the cycles are usually longer. Short-cycle price event markets absorb real-time quotes, volatility, order flow, and traders’ judgments about direction, making them closer to high-frequency trading.
This evolution makes event contracts a general product structure. Users don’t need to deal with complex position parameters, and they can still express their views around clear outcomes. As a result, the product experience shifts from “finding an event worth predicting” to “quickly expressing direction in familiar markets.”
VIII. TurboFlow: event contracts enter the retail on-chain trading scene
Event contract markets are evolving along different paths. One type of platform emphasizes institution-building and regulatory frameworks, improving market credibility through standardized rules. Another type emphasizes global accessibility and on-chain execution, reducing geographic and infrastructure constraints with公开透明 mechanisms. The third type is starting to explore event products with shorter cycles that are closer to trading scenarios, lowering the participation barrier and improving capital efficiency.
TurboFlow represents a third path of exploration. It is an on-chain trading platform for global retail users, integrating Perpetuals (perpetual contracts), Event Contracts (event contracts), and Prediction Markets (prediction markets) into a single trading ecosystem—trying to make professional trading products simpler and easier to participate in.
On TurboFlow’s event contracts, users can judge the price direction of assets such as BTC, ETH, and gold after a specified cycle. You can participate with as little as $2, and each trading round takes as little as 30 seconds to complete. Clear choice of direction, a fixed expiration time, and pre-displayed potential outcomes lower the barrier to understanding and operating.
TurboFlow also places event contracts into a full trading ecosystem. Users can choose short-cycle Event Contracts based on their market views, or use perpetual contracts to manage longer-term direction exposure.
On the market infrastructure layer, TurboFlow introduces professional market makers to provide liquidity and supports a more market-driven trading experience through transparent on-chain execution. Its product direction continues Hayek’s emphasized logic of price discovery: the views of different participants enter the market, and prices and odds change with supply, demand, and information.
TurboFlow and Polymarket show two typical scenarios for event contracts. Polymarket lets users trade public events such as politics, economics, and culture. TurboFlow further covers outcomes in short-cycle markets and connects event contracts with perpetual contracts. Event contracts therefore gain a broader range of time horizons and reach more users with different backgrounds.
IX. After event contracts go mainstream, what still matters
Looking back on this history, the long-term value of event contracts comes from three elements.
First, rules need to be clear. The underlying asset, observation time, data sources, and settlement conditions should be explicitly shown before trading.
Second, markets need liquidity. The number of participants, the quality of market making, and order depth all affect whether prices can absorb information in a timely manner, and they also affect users’ actual trading experience.
Third, risk needs to be understood correctly. Binary outcomes mean profits and losses concentrate at the settlement point, and short-cycle trading further amplifies the impact of volatility and timing judgments. Market prices and odds express what traders believe under specific rules and liquidity conditions, and cannot be treated as guarantees of results.
These principles connect IEM, Polymarket, Kalshi, and TurboFlow. Technology and interfaces keep changing, but trustworthy rules, transparent execution, and sufficient liquidity are always the foundation for event contracts to scale up.
Conclusion: from information markets to everyday trading entry points
From group betting in 1907 to Hayek’s explanation of price mechanisms; from the 1988 Iowa Electronic Markets to Polymarket bringing prediction markets onto the blockchain, and then to TurboFlow integrating short-cycle Event Contracts with perpetual contracts into a single platform—event contracts completed a long-term evolution from ideas and experiments, to markets, and finally to products.
This history also reveals why event contracts keep growing: people always need a simple way to express judgments about the future. Today, event contracts can cover political outcomes months ahead, or market direction 30 seconds ahead. As the time scale shrinks and participation becomes easier, the logic of price discovery continues to hold.
If traditional prediction markets mainly aggregate participants’ judgments about the future through medium- to long-term event trading, then today’s short-cycle event contracts further extend this mechanism to trading scenarios that are shorter and higher frequency. For TurboFlow, this evolution points to a more specific goal: let more everyday users participate in transparent, easy-to-understand on-chain trading supported by real market liquidity.