A new player has entered the Ethereum scene and it’s not another DeFi app or NFT drop. It’s Livestakes, a prediction market born out of ETHGlobal, and it’s adding a whole new twist to Ethereum hackathons: betting on the winners.
Yes, you read that right.
Betting on Hackathon Champions
Unveiled at ETHGlobal 2025 earlier this July, Livestakes lets users place bets on who they think will win a hackathon. But it’s not just about winning money it’s also about helping developers get funded and noticed, even before they collect their official prizes.
Here’s how it works: when users bet on a team, their money goes into a separate prize pool completely independent from the event’s main or side-track prizes. According to Livestakes’ content strategist, known simply as Ziz, if betting activity hits something like $100,000, then that same amount becomes a new pool for the winners.
When the hackathon wraps up, 80% of that pool is split among the winning bettors, while the remaining 20% goes straight to the winning developer team that people bet on.
Hype Meets Funding
But Livestakes isn’t just for degens and bettors. It’s also a fresh, experimental way to support builders in the Ethereum space. The platform helps developers gain visibility by featuring short-form vertical videos kind of like TikToks for techies that explain what each project is and who’s behind it.
“It’s all this hype and energy craze that you see in meme markets,” said Ziz, “but now we have it at hackathons. More money, more attention, more momentum.”
Betting With Conviction
While the idea might sound wild at first, Livestakes taps into a deeper truth about Ethereum and Web3: community conviction matters. Prediction markets like Livestakes allow users to vote with their wallets, showing early support for devs and projects they believe in even before judges announce the winners.
This kind of real-time engagement could help promising projects attract more funding, media attention, or partnerships down the line. It’s a kind of crowd-powered signal boost that goes beyond clapping in the audience or sharing a tweet.
More Than a Side Hustle
Livestakes joins the ranks of other prediction platforms like Polymarket and Kalshi, but with a builder-first twist. Instead of speculating on politics or sports, Livestakes turns the spotlight on hackathon projects—and potentially helps fund the next big thing in crypto.
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has long supported prediction markets. In fact, he was part of Polymarket’s $70M Series B raise in 2024, and he’s rumored to be backing a new round that could push its valuation past $200 million. So it’s no surprise the Ethereum community is paying attention to what Livestakes is doing.
The Bigger Picture
What Livestakes represents is more than just fun and games. It’s a signal that Ethereum’s future might be shaped less by centralized grant programs and more by community-coordinated belief. If enough people bet on your project, maybe you don’t need to win the official prize you’ve already won attention, capital, and credibility.
In the spirit of Ethereum’s decentralization ethos, platforms like Livestakes could make funding more democratic. And if they catch on, we may be watching the birth of a new type of ecosystem where builders rise, not just by code, but by conviction.
