Voting is trading, understand the social prediction market on the Base chain in one article Upside | CryptoSeed

Author: Daisy, ChainCatcher

Editor: Fairy, ChainCatcher

Base-based social prediction platform

Upside is a social prediction market built on the Base blockchain network, and the core mechanism relies on the dissemination trend of social content to judge and play. Users can upload links they believe have the potential of "hot products", such as tweets, articles or videos, and the platform then creates an independent market around the link. Other users can participate in the prediction by purchasing "tickets" to determine whether the content will be widely spread.

The "ticket listing" behavior requires payment of USDC stablecoins, with an initial price of US$0.01 and a maximum of 1 million tickets are issued. The ticket price will increase dynamically with the purchase volume. Users can either hold the ticket to wait for appreciation or sell it in the middle to obtain profits. All transactions are recorded on the chain to ensure openness, transparency and traceability.

The platform implements the "unique link market" system, and the same content cannot be created repeatedly. The first uploader enjoys exclusive creation rights, effectively incentivizing the early discovery of content. Each issue of the high-quality market will receive the platform's "prediction pool" reward, which will be distributed proportionally to link uploaders, original content creators and vote-listed participants. The reward form is USDC.

Mechanism design and incentive structure

Compared with traditional prediction markets that focus on objective results, such as Polymarket, the mechanism built by Upside is based on the subjective trend judgment of content popularity, which is more in line with the user's usage logic and judgment methods in the social media environment. It is not to judge whether the incident occurred, but to judge "what content may become popular."

Upside is based on the “unique link market” mechanism, each social link can create a market only once, avoid repeated competition, and give content discoverers clear incentive rights. This model is different from content ownership-based protocols such as Zora, which emphasizes uploading and holding of content, while Upside does not require users to migrate or host original content, and only uses external links as market carriers, focusing on speculation rather than ownership.

The platform has set up a diversified income path, and all rewards are distributed in USDC, covering five categories of main user roles:

• Curators: If you upload a link to get the most votes in a certain round, you will receive a 5% reward from the forecast pool;
• Voters: Those who hold tickets in this market share 80% of the rewards, distributed according to the ratio of the tickets;
• Traders: Earn the price difference by buying low and selling tickets at high. Currently, the platform does not charge handling fees;
• Inviters: After inviting users, you can obtain 50% of their incurred agreement fees within the first 50 days;
• Creators: If the original content becomes a winning market, you can get a 15% reward for the forecast pool.

It is worth noting that a single piece of content can be a winning market in multiple prediction rounds, and relevant participants can continuously obtain profits.

At the execution level, Upside prevents manipulation through mechanisms such as on-chain recording, minimum funding threshold and five-minute settlement delay. All functions run on the Base network, with low transaction costs and high processing efficiency. The threshold for user participation is low, you only need to paste the link to create or join the market. The current content is mainly X (formerly Twitter), and may be expanded to more platforms in the future.

Team background and development progress

Upside has not disclosed information about the core development team as of now.

The platform was launched on June 10, 2025. It is currently in the invitation code registration stage. The number of users is still limited, mainly concentrated in the crypto community. Some users reported that there may be problems such as registration delays or content verification failures during peak periods.

According to wellfound information, Upside completed a seed first round of financing in December 2024, with a total amount of US$1.2 million and a valuation of US$10 million. The specific investor, shareholding structure and agreement content have not been disclosed yet, and no official press release has been released.

Judging from the current functions, the platform already has core mechanisms such as market creation, trading, pricing and incentive distribution, and may expand community functions such as rankings and historical records in the future. The overall product is still in the early stages of the product, and the mechanisms and functions are in continuous iteration.