Whitepaper Reading - Microeconomics of Prediction Markets
Whitepaper Reading Session EthDenver
A roundtable discussion by builders, for builders — dissecting the protocols, primitives and design choices. Hosted at the LVC, National Western Center.
The venue is in a separate building, please see instructions below to access.
Topics:
1. Kalshi vs Polymarket's Battle for Price vs Liquidity
An empirical comparison of Kalshi and Polymarket across every NFL game in the 2025 season. The study finds Kalshi leads price adjustments by ~7 seconds, but Polymarket requires 3–4× more volume to move prices by the same amount — suggesting that faster markets aren't always deeper ones. We'll discuss the market design choices driving these differences and what they mean for prediction market infrastructure.
Summary || Paper (Authors: Ally Zach + Danning Sui from Pantera Capital)
2. Leverage on Prediction Markets
Leverage in prediction markets is uniquely hard because of jump risk (sudden price movements), which can move past liquidation windows. This piece proposes per-epoch rolling fees (like perp funding) plus better market design (e.g., auctions that capture jump arbitrage and rebate it) to reduce jump risk, boost liquidity, and make leverage viable.
Summary || Paper (Authors: Kaleb Rasmussen from Polychain)
Topic Leads:
Location: "The Shop" at CSU Spur, 4777 National Western Dr, Denver, CO 80216
Location: The Shop is next to CSU Spur or Rocky Mount Quarter House
Entrance: The outside and entrance is the red circle.
Room: Follow red arrow into room 4 "Dolores River Conference Room"
Thank you to EthDenver/Dani for offering their space to host this discussion. 🙏
Format
Round table discussions (No panels)
This session starts with 5–10 minutes of silent reading, followed by a roundtable discussion of the papers.
Summaries: We create summaries to help everyone understand.
About Whitepaper Reading Club
The Whitepaper Reading Club is a community of 700 engineers, founders, core-devs, researchers, across Singapore, Malaysia, San Francisco and New York who come together to read and discuss blockchain papers (website). We create summaries for each paper (summaries) and have held 70+ sessions since 2023.
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