Gondor Raises $2.5M to Bring Lending and Leverage to Prediction Markets
DeFi venture Gondor has raised a brand new $2.5 million pre-seed spherical in December 2025, including contemporary momentum to its push to turn into the core lending layer for on-chain prediction markets.
The spherical included participation from Prelude, Castle Island Ventures, and Maven11, with continued backing from the Polymarket ecosystem.
The elevate is tied carefully to Gondor’s subsequent huge step: the launch of its public beta.
Gondor, together with the clear curiosity in its product, reveals prediction markets are transferring past easy betting apps – and now want actual monetary infrastructure beneath them.
Prediction market capital is locked and idle
Right now, prediction markets like Polymarket undergo from a primary inefficiency.
That is, when you place a wager, your capital is caught till the market resolves – and typically that’s for a number of months. That capital can’t be traded, lent, reinvested, or used as collateral. It simply sits there.
Gondor fixes that by letting merchants borrow $USDC stablecoins in opposition to their open Polymarket positions. You deposit your energetic “Yes” or “No” shares into Gondor, and the protocol helps you to take out a mortgage whereas protecting your unique publicity intact.
In a nutshell, prediction positions cease being useless capital, and begin behaving like actual monetary belongings.
2x leverage comes to Polymarket subsequent week
With its beta launch, Gondor is introducing up to 2x leverage via a easy looping technique.
Traders can borrow in opposition to their place and redeploy that capital right into a second place, successfully doubling publicity with out including new funds.
This type of leverage is totally new to prediction markets. Until now, merchants had to both shut positions or herald exterior capital to scale. Gondor eliminates that limitation.
The crew has already hinted at pushing leverage increased – to as a lot as 4x to 5x in 2026 – as soon as liquidity and danger programs are confirmed in manufacturing.
Beyond simply “buying and selling”
Gondor’s product isn’t nearly leverage for buying and selling. It’s about turning prediction markets into an actual on-chain asset class.
Earlier this 12 months, Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin pointed out that prediction markets are unattractive for severe hedging as a result of they generate no yield.
While Gondor doesn’t instantly add yield to positions, it provides the instruments that make yield potential down the road – collateralization, lending, leverage, and finally structured monetary merchandise.
That’s why Gondor frames itself because the Aave of prediction markets.
It doesn’t compete with Polymarket – it sits as a platform on high of it, powering liquidity and capital circulation the identical means lending protocols power DeFi at this time.
Leverage is dangerous enterprise
As all crypto merchants are conscious, including leverage to prediction markets may also add actual danger – and that danger isn’t remoted to simply particular person customers.
If the worth of a place drops far sufficient, it may be liquidated. If too many leveraged positions unwind directly, it might trigger sharp, fast-moving cascades in skinny markets.
Gondor is making an attempt to handle this by beginning with conservative borrowing limits and solely supporting high-liquidity markets throughout beta.
It remains to be in its very early levels. The protocol is simply coming into beta, and actual stress testing hasn’t occurred but, however this can be a reside try to construct the lacking monetary layer for on-chain prediction markets.
Whether Gondor turns into that layer remains to be an open query. But with contemporary capital secured and its beta now reside, it’s formally one of the crucial essential experiments taking place within the prediction market area proper now.
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