The expansion, announced September 9, follows an initial Kalshi integration launched August 12 that covered Sports contracts and Crypto perpetual futures. Election markets represent the second phase. More than $133 million has already traded on 2026 House and Senate race contracts as of mid-August, a figure that has already surpassed the total volume of the entire 2024 congressional election cycle.

The feed delivers both Level 1 data (top-of-book prices and executed trades) and Level 2 data (aggregated depth of book by price level), the same data tiers that traditional financial exchanges provide to market makers and high-frequency trading desks. DoubleZero distributes this data over its private fiber-optic network using multicast technology, which broadcasts a single data stream simultaneously to all connected subscribers rather than sending individual copies to each recipient. The company says this cuts latency by roughly 20 percent compared with standard internet routing. Since its April 2026 launch, DoubleZero Edge has logged 447 distinct subscriber seats in total, with 115 distinct seats recorded in Q2 alone. The underlying network now routes traffic for 462 Solana validators, covering 59 percent of the blockchain's mainnet stake weight.

"Election markets give institutions a real-time, tradable view into how expectations shift as political events unfold," said Andy Ross, Head of Institutional at Kalshi. Austin Federa, who co-founded DoubleZero after leading strategy at the Solana Foundation, framed the shift in simpler terms: "Prediction markets are starting to matter the same way [as traditional markets], especially around elections." As announced when the partnership launched in August, Kalshi is waiving its revenue share for the first year to reduce barriers for new trading firms. DoubleZero Edge also includes a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server, a standardized interface that lets AI-powered trading agents connect and onboard to the data feed with minimal manual setup, a feature aimed explicitly at algorithmic and autonomous trading programs.

The integration reflects broader momentum in prediction markets. Global monthly volume in the sector climbed from under $100 million two years ago to more than $20 billion in early 2026. Research firm Bernstein projects the sector's revenue will grow at a 64 percent compound annual rate through 2028, reaching $1.7 billion. Kalshi itself recorded $148 billion in cumulative trading volume year-to-date through mid-2026 and carries a valuation of $22 billion following its most recent funding round. Kalshi operates as a CFTC-regulated Designated Contract Market; the CFTC dropped its legal appeal against Kalshi's election markets in 2025, a regulatory outcome that established the legal foundation institutional participants now rely on. In July 2026, Kalshi also launched its Midterms Hub, bundling polling averages, FEC fundraising data, and live market odds into a single election-focused product that contextualizes what institutional subscribers are accessing through the DoubleZero feed. The platform has also demonstrated active integrity enforcement: Kalshi suspended congressional candidate Laurie Buckhout for trading on her own race and issued a lifetime ban to former Congressman George Santos. At Robinhood, prediction market revenue of $156 million has already surpassed crypto trading revenue of $100 million.

Regional picture: diverging access

The institutional infrastructure story is largely a U.S. and European one for now. DoubleZero's 166 dedicated fiber links are concentrated across the U.S. East Coast, continental Europe, and East Asia. Trading desks in Africa and South Asia would access the feed over standard internet connections, which reduces or eliminates the latency edge that is the product's central selling point.

Access at the regulatory level varies sharply by region. India has moved to block prediction markets outright. Polymarket went dark in India in May 2026 following a government directive to internet service providers, and reporting by The Print and CoinDesk indicated Kalshi could be next. For institutional or retail participants based in India, one of the world's largest crypto user bases, the DoubleZero/Kalshi product is effectively off-limits. Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka remain in grey zones, with no confirmed country-level rulings beyond India.

Africa presents a different picture. Kalshi operates in 143 countries and its restricted list does not include Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa, or Ghana, meaning institutional access is at least theoretically available. African platforms are also building their own prediction market infrastructure locally. Nigeria's Busha launched a prediction product called Signal in August 2026 under a Lagos State license. Luno rolled out crypto prediction markets in Nigeria and South Africa in March 2026. Bayse Markets began offering binary contracts on currency pairs including USD/NGN. These platforms are building retail-grade products; the DoubleZero/Kalshi integration points toward what institutional-grade infrastructure for the sector could eventually look like.

What comes next

The November 3 midterms will serve as a live stress test for institutional prediction market infrastructure at scale. Beyond that election, the broader question is whether the convergence of DePIN fiber networks, multicast data delivery, and AI trading agents creates a durable new layer for on-chain financial data, or remains a niche product for a handful of quantitative desks. DoubleZero's numbers on Solana validator coverage suggest the underlying network has already crossed into majority infrastructure territory for that chain. Adding regulated prediction market data to that stack is the next step in the argument that on-chain markets deserve the same market microstructure treatment as traditional exchanges.