Innovations in prediction market gameplay: What is Polymarket's attention market? What trading opportunities does it offer?

In February 2026, the world’s largest decentralized prediction market, Polymarket, delivered an astonishing performance: monthly trading volume exceeded $7.66 billion, maintaining positive growth for five consecutive months. But for this track, which is shifting from “edge experimentation” to “mainstream infrastructure,” a more symbolic event than historic data is about to unfold in early March—a gameplay innovation called “Attention Markets.”

This is not Polymarket’s first attempt to redefine “prediction.” But as trading targets extend from “who will be elected” to “who is being discussed,” and data sources penetrate from news headlines into TikTok and Instagram, a subtle transfer of pricing power around attention itself is quietly happening. From Gate’s perspective, this article will dissect the underlying logic of this innovation, market potential, and the structural opportunities intertwined with Polymarket’s token issuance expectations.

What are “Attention Markets”? Elevating from Event Outcomes to the Process of Public Opinion

Traditional prediction markets are essentially “result pricing.” Users bet on outcomes like “Will Bitcoin break $100,000 before 2027?” or “Who will win a certain country’s election?” with funds betting on binary results. Polymarket’s collaboration with the native AI analysis platform Kaito AI on “Attention Markets” shifts the trading focus from static events to dynamic processes.

According to official disclosures, this product will track two core indicators:

• Mindshare: The absolute frequency and relative share of mentions of a specific entity (brand, KOL, public blockchain) on social platforms;
• Sentiment: Whether discussions about the entity are positive, negative, or neutral.

This means users can open or market-make positions on questions like:

• “Will Anthropic’s X mentions surpass OpenAI next month?”
• “Will the negative sentiment ratio for Trump’s Truth Social drop below 30%?”
• “Will Gate Token’s social media buzz during Asian hours surpass that of Europe and America?”

This is not just an expansion of trading assets but a fundamental shift in pricing logic. Yu Hu, founder of Kaito AI, states that traditional polls and surveys have inherent lag and cost barriers, whereas “attention contracts” with real money at risk will enable the first real-time, transparent, and manipulation-resistant quantification of public sentiment.

Product Roadmap and Market Expectations

Thibault, head of Polymarket’s crypto division, revealed that the first Attention Markets are scheduled to launch in early March 2026, initially focusing on the AI sector, with dozens of heat betting contracts on top large models and computing projects. By the end of 2026, this category is expected to expand to thousands of active markets across entertainment, sports, finance, and geopolitics.

Notably, this is not an isolated attempt by Polymarket. In January 2026, the startup Noise, also targeting the attention sector, completed a $7.1 million seed round led by Paradigm, with Kaito AI as an investor. This reveals a growing consensus in the crypto VC circle: InfoFi—transforming unstructured information into tradable assets—will be the second growth curve for prediction markets after politics and sports.

Polymarket has a clear early advantage. Its $7.66 billion trading volume in January is not just a number but a real barrier in liquidity depth and user trading habits. Once tens of thousands of attention markets open simultaneously, Polymarket will transform from an “event prediction platform” into a “global attention exchange.”

Regulatory Play and POLY Token Expectations

When discussing Polymarket’s future, “POLY” is an unavoidable keyword. On February 4, 2026, Polymarket’s parent company Blockratize officially filed trademark applications for “POLY” and “$POLY” with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, covering crypto trading software, digital token services, and blockchain payment systems.

This move is widely interpreted as the legal preparation for the final mile before token issuance. Although Polymarket’s management has repeatedly confirmed plans to issue a “utility” native token and airdrop, this trademark application based on the “intent to use” rule provides a traceable legal timestamp for the first time.

However, compliance remains a looming sword. In the same week as the trademark filing, a temporary restraining order was issued by a Nevada court, prohibiting Polymarket from operating event contracts in that state. The platform has transferred this case to federal court. Currently, on prediction market platform Myriad, traders assign only a 30% probability that Polymarket will officially announce token issuance before May 2026.

This uncertainty, however, spurs an alternative trading strategy: if attention markets see unexpectedly strong adoption in early March, the resulting cash flow and user growth could accelerate regulatory negotiations. For Gate users, this means dynamically tracking the progress of POLY trademark review and daily active user data post-launch of attention markets, which may serve as more sensitive leading indicators than legal developments.

Market Expectations from Gate Data: Current Prices and Future Probabilities

Prediction markets are not isolated gambling venues; their sentiment resonance with spot markets is becoming more tightly coupled. As of February 11, 2026, Gate platform data shows:

• Bitcoin (BTC) current price $66,700, down 3% in 24 hours;
• Ethereum (ETH) current price $1,950, down 3.8% in 24 hours.

Meanwhile, in Polymarket’s prediction contracts, traders price an 80% probability for “BTC reaching $100,000 before 2027” and a 40% probability for “ETH surpassing $5,000 within 2026.” The juxtaposition of current prices and long-term probabilities is itself a form of attention pricing—it reflects market skepticism about narrative sustainability and hints that once macro liquidity or regulatory signals shift, the “consensus probability” in prediction markets will rapidly transmit to spot prices.

The addition of attention markets will make this transmission chain shorter and more direct. Imagine: when a top public chain’s “Mindshare” contract price rises for three consecutive days, quantitative trading systems can fully convert this into a buy signal in the spot market. Prediction markets will shift from “reflecting the future” to influencing the present.

How to Position for This Innovation?

The emergence of attention markets signifies a deep integration of content value and trading strategies:

1. Content as prophecy: Fundamental analysis and heat tracking of projects will no longer be just traffic tools but directly influence Mindshare contract prices as “research reports.” Influential content creators will find a monetization path akin to “knowledge asset securitization” in attention markets.
2. Managing POLY airdrop expectations: Polymarket emphasizes that tokens will focus on “utility” and “long-term value,” with past interactions likely serving as airdrop weight factors. The March launch of attention markets could be the largest user education scenario before token TGE. Gate users are advised, within compliance, to participate in testnets or early contracts with small positions to accumulate interaction records.
3. Cross-market arbitrage: When the sentiment index of the same entity (e.g., an AI project) in attention markets diverges significantly from secondary market token prices, new statistical arbitrage opportunities may arise between assets with different risk profiles.

Summary

The collaboration between Polymarket and Kaito AI marks the prediction market’s discovery of a second native scenario beyond elections. Pricing attention essentially builds a ledger for the scarcity of the digital age—public time and emotion.

As of February 2026, we stand at the confluence of two waves: one is Polymarket’s proven liquidity advantage with $7.6 billion in monthly trading volume; the other is a trillion-dollar blue ocean opened by “Mindshare + Sentiment” as coordinates. This encompasses grand narratives about technology, compliance, and tokenomics, as well as tiny opportunities for ordinary users to leverage information and judgment to beat consensus.

Just like the fluctuating numbers on Gate’s market panel and the probability curves in prediction markets, the future alpha may well be hidden in the unpriced blank space of “attention.”