Few consumer products to come out of the crypto industry have won people over the way prediction markets have, and all the while blockchains have quietly become the plumbing that lets those markets grow. Each one pushes the other, and that direction doesn’t always flatter either side. Look at them as a single system and their recent takeoff makes sense; pull them apart, and you miss why they both matter at once, and why trouble in one rarely stays contained on that side.

The boom didn’t lift every platform equally. Liquidity pooled where the order books ran deepest and where disputed outcomes got settled without drama, so the gap between the strong platforms and the weak ones widened instead of closing. That difference shows up…