Meta plans standalone prediction-market app to rival Polymarket, Kalshi

Mark Zuckerberg had a small Meta team building Arena, a standalone prediction-market app meant to compete with Polymarket and Kalshi without living inside Facebook or Instagram. The project was framed as an experiment, but its design pointed squarely at one of the fastest-growing and most legally unsettled corners of the internet.

Arena was being developed as an independent smartphone app, separate from Meta’s core social products. The current concept called for a points-based system at launch rather than real-money wagering, a structure that could lower early regulatory friction while still giving Meta a new place to hold attention. Later betting with real money had not been ruled out, keeping the door open to a business model that would move far closer to the event-contract markets now drawing scrutiny in Washington.

Pew Research Center put combined monthly global trading volume on Kalshi and Polymarket at about $24 billion in April 2026, a sharp rise since mid-2025. Prediction markets had also broken into the political mainstream during the 2024 U.S. presidential election, when betting on outcomes became part of the campaign conversation for many users, traders and regulators.

The legal picture has grown more complicated as the industry expanded. Pew said nearly half of U.S. states prohibit election betting entirely, and more than half restrict it in some form. Minnesota became the first state to prohibit Kalshi, Polymarket and similar platforms statewide in May 2026, a sign that state-level resistance is hardening as event contracts spread.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission issued a prediction markets enforcement advisory on February 25, 2026, after public release of two enforcement cases involving misuse of nonpublic information and fraud tied to certain KalshiEX event contracts. The agency followed that with a staff advisory on March 12, 2026, reminding designated contract markets of their regulatory obligations. Meta had not publicly confirmed Arena or announced a launch date.