‘Steve Jobs’ of crypto just got a deal with Elon Musk — and it could change Web3 forever originally appeared on TheStreet .

[From the Editor’s Desk]

When Polymarket first launched in 2020, it was dismissed by some as just another crypto-native betting site. But in hindsight, it was quietly laying the foundation for one of the most useful real-world use cases for blockchain, which is turning speculation into data.

Now, the platform has cemented its place on the global stage. On June 6, Elon Musk’s X (formerly Twitter) named Polymarket its official prediction market partner. And with this partnership, Web3 finally has its first native app to be fully embraced by a mainstream platform.

This is no small moment, and perhaps no project is better positioned to benefit than Polygon, the blockchain Polymarket calls home.

Polymarket’s journey

Polymarket’s rise didn’t happen overnight. Over the past year, its traction soared, especially during key political events. In 2024 alone, users bet over $8 billion on predictions related to elections, geopolitics, pop culture, and macro trends. What made it sticky wasn’t just the money, it was the real-time reflection of public sentiment.

If you wanted to know who was likely to win the U.S. election, Polymarket often provided a sharper signal than most opinion polls. And that’s not by accident.

When I asked Polygon co-founder Sandeep Nailwal whether Polygon played an active role in Polymarket’s success and his answer surprised me.

“The best applications don't really need support from the industry side,” he said during an interview at Token2049 Dubai. “If you ask me how much contribution we had to do to make Polymarket a success , I would say it's less than 10%.”

That doesn’t mean Polygon was absent.

As Sandeep explained, “We could only enable whenever they have any queries, they are facing any problems, we would have like few integration experts with them who can actually provide support.”

Why Polymarket’s success belongs to the builders

But the credit, Sandeep emphasized, belongs entirely to the Polymarket team. “All applications become successful because those tools are there. And as I said that we are building vanilla infrastructure. All we can do is we can do our job well. And rest is all up to the application.”

In Sandeep’s view, the myth of chains lifting up decentralized applications (dApps) is overplayed. What matters more is product focus — and that’s where Polymarket excelled.

“There was a time where in the last bear cycle, we provided investment to them at the right time, which enabled them to keep pushing… but I wouldn’t want to take any credit for their success.”