The idea of prediction markets is centuries old. Informal information markets date back to early 16th-century Italy, where people speculated on who would become the next pope and circulated the odds through handwritten letters. While the technology has changed dramatically, the underlying instinct has not.
People have always looked to collective opinion as a way to understand what may happen next. But as prediction markets expand and attract attention from major technology companies such as Meta, the industry faces a new question: if these platforms are designed to reflect collective intelligence, why are so many markets still shaped by centralized teams?
Rain Trade is taking a different approach to forecasting. Rather than treating market creation as a centralized process, the platform allows anyone to launch public or private prediction markets on any topic, in any language. Users decide what deserves a market, whether it’s the game aired tonight, a political development, or even the outcome of the latest season of Love Island USA, which generated more than $20 million in trading volume on Kalshi during its first two weeks.
The launch coincides with the 2026 FIFA World Cup, during which millions of fans continually debate match outcomes, player performances, and tournament predictions. The launch campaign is backed by former heavyweight champion Mike Tyson, who will serve as the face of Rain Trade’s official rollout.
Roy Shaham, CEO of Rain Protocol, the foundation on which Rain Trade is built, said the platform reflects where prediction markets are heading next: “Users want more than a list of markets chosen for them. They want the freedom to create, participate, and build communities around the events they care about. Rain Trade was designed to give them that control, turning prediction markets into something shaped by users, not just platform operators.”
That user-driven approach is central to Rain Trade’s model. Unlike traditional platforms, where markets are selected by the platform itself, Rain Trade allows users to create and share their own markets. They can keep them public or keep them private and password-protected for a specific community, group, or audience. That flexibility allows prediction markets to be shaped less by major headlines and more by the smaller conversations happening in real-time across online communities and in private chats.
To encourage participation, market creators can earn a share of the trading activity generated by the markets they launch. Whether the markets are formed around the World Cup, entertainment, politics, or in a private group chat, the idea is that the community, not a centralized team, should always be the ones to decide what is worth predicting.
