Polymarket, the blockchain-driven prediction markets platform, is acquiring Brahma, a crypto startup that builds DeFi infrastructure. The move is framed as a step to consolidate Polymarket’s stack and broaden its product suite as the two firms align on a path toward deeper on-chain and off-chain liquidity.

Brahma announced the transition on Wednesday, saying its team will dedicate its efforts to evolving Polymarket’s stack and product offerings. The company, founded in 2021, has reported processing over $1 billion in volume and asserts that its technology could help Polymarket streamline wallet creation, deposits, and token redemptions for users.

According to the announcement, the acquisition could unlock more liquidity for niche, low-volume markets on Polymarket and help the platform scale complex products for sophisticated users. Polymarket’s founder and CEO, Shayne Coplan, told Fortune that building reliable infrastructure across blockchain networks and traditional financial rails remains hard and there are no shortcuts. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed at press time.

Key takeaways

• Polymarket is acquiring Brahma to enhance its infrastructure and product stack, with Brahma winding down its own products as the transition unfolds.
• Brahma’s core offerings—Strategy Vaults for automated DeFi strategies, Brahma Accounts (smart accounts for DeFi users), and Swype.fun (a Visa card linked to DeFi positions)—will be phased out over the next 30 days.
• The deal aims to bring more liquidity to Polymarket’s markets, particularly in smaller, harder-to-liquidate segments where users may benefit from smoother wallet creation and redemption flows.
• Polymarket has pursued aggressive expansion despite broader crypto-market softness, including partnerships and acquisitions announced in recent months.

Strategic implications of the Brahma integration

The Brahma transaction signals Polymarket’s intent to deepen technical capacity behind its prediction markets. Brahma’s experience in designing and operating scalable, user-ready DeFi infrastructure could help Polymarket reduce friction for users—potentially lowering barriers to entry and increasing throughput on low-visibility markets where liquidity is typically thin.

While the two firms have not disclosed the purchase price, the alignment comes as Polymarket has sought to diversify its toolkit beyond core prediction markets. The integration underscores a broader industry push to merge on-chain finance primitives with markets that hinge on real-world events and outcomes.

What changes for Brahma’s products and users

As part of the transition, Brahma’s three main products will be wound down over the next month: Strategy Vaults, which automate DeFi positioning; Brahma Accounts, the platform’s smart-account solution for DeFi users; and Swype.fun, a card-linked interface intended to realize DeFi positions for real-world spending. For existing users of these services, the wind-down process will be navigated in the coming weeks as the Polymarket integration proceeds.

Brahma’s team noted that its solutions were designed to meet sophisticated users’ demands, including automated strategies and streamlined access to DeFi features. The move to fold these capabilities into Polymarket could embed more robust infrastructure into the platform and potentially broaden its appeal to professional market participants and developers building on top of prediction markets.

Polymarket’s broader expansion playbook

The Brahma deal is part of a broader acceleration of Polymarket’s growth trajectory. In March, the company announced a partnership with Palantir Technologies and TWG AI to build an AI-powered sports integrity platform, signaling continued investment in data-focused, technologist-led initiatives. Earlier, Polymarket acquired Dome, a Y Combinator-backed provider of developer tools for prediction markets, and Lunch, a boutique firm focused on assembling and recruiting technical teams for startups.

Despite a tougher macro environment for crypto, Polymarket has faced regulatory scrutiny in several jurisdictions given its business model around unregulated betting on real-world events. Notably, recent coverage has highlighted how prediction markets have encountered resistance in places like Argentina, alongside ongoing debates in the United States about market design and regulation.

Polymarket’s ongoing expansion, including the Brahma acquisition, indicates a strategy focused on building a more capable infrastructure backbone and scaling its ecosystem through partnerships and targeted acquisitions. Investors and users will want to watch how the Brahma integration unfolds, how liquidity dynamics evolve on niche markets, and how regulatory developments shape the platform’s ability to deploy new features at scale.

As the integration progresses, readers should monitor whether Polymarket can successfully merge Brahma’s engineering capabilities with its existing stack, and what that means for the speed and reliability of user experiences, especially in lower-liquidity markets where liquidity depth and transaction costs can be decisive.

Twenty-one crypto organizations have signed an open letter urging US colleges to incorporate decentralized finance into their curricula, arguing that there will be massive demand for crypto talent on Wall Street.

“Our purpose with this letter is simple: to respectfully urge higher education institutions across the United States to further integrate digital assets, blockchain, and decentralized finance into their business and legal curricula,” the open letter reads, which was published on Wednesday.

The campaign was spearheaded by decentralized protocol aggregator 1Inch, with signatories including the Solana Policy Institute, Blockchain Association, DeFi Education Fund and crypto platforms like Aave, MyEtherWallet, Delphi Digital and Messari.

While 1Inch acknowledged that DeFi is taught in some schools, it argued that current curricula treat it mostly as theoretical, and that students should gain a more practical understanding of a “critical part of the global financial ecosystem.”

“It is wrong to think, as some do, that DeFi and crypto technologies lack practical uses or are somehow deviant to the public good,” 1Inch said, pointing out that stablecoins eliminate cross-border payment friction, lending protocols offer yield opportunities for investors and tokenized assets enable trading around the clock.

“The theoretical phase is over. Ideas have already become infrastructure.”

In comments to Cointelegraph, 1Inch said it is pushing for more DeFi courses to be taught in the classroom because opportunities have expanded beyond developer roles to those in more business and legal roles.

“It’s no longer just hoodies; it’s suits and ties too,” 1Inch said, noting that Wall Street firms like Goldman Sachs and PwC are on the lookout for crypto talent beyond the tech-savvy programmers.

“The aim is to build on top of these greater DeFi understanding and practical knowledge, not just among the developers of tomorrow but CEOs and CLOs.”

The open letter asks for more “foundational education” in blockchain architecture and DeFi as a core module rather than as an elective course, with the course material touching on everything from automated market makers and liquidity provision to decentralized autonomous organizations and smart contract risks.