If you don’t use prediction markets, you might think of them as places where you bet on simple, yes-or-no questions. 

At Kalshi, that’s quickly changing. 

Sure, yes-or-no bets are still Kalshi’s bread and butter. But bettors are increasingly drawn to parlays, or “combos,” in the company’s parlance, which package a series of bets into a single trade. That decreases a bettor’s odds of winning, but it also increases winning bets’ payout. 

In our latest Spotlight, we unpack Kalshi’s rapidly evolving trade volume, and what it says about the platform and its customers. 

Single markets — those that let bettors wager on a single yes-or-no question — have grown 19-fold over the past year. But the average amount per trade is falling. In October 2025, the average trade was about $127. Last month, it was just under $40. In that span, the median trade fell from $14.78 to $4.59. 

The same was true even for high-probability markets. Trades priced at 90¢ and above saw their average fall from $319.62 to $82.81. Trades priced under 10¢ saw their average fall from $15.62 to $3.82. 

In other words, there may have been more trades, but traders were willing to wager far less money, no matter their odds. 

Kalshi’s combo markets were an entirely different story. They are taking an ever-larger share of Kalshi’s volume, rising to about one out of every five trades in just one year. 

While the median combo trade held steady at about $9.30, the average nearly doubled, rising from $37.78 to $61.69. 

That rise was driven entirely by trades priced at 90¢ and above, where the average rose from $202 to $512. Given the low odds that a combo pays out, this suggests traders are putting increasingly large sums betting a parlay will fail.

At the same time, the average size of a combo trade priced at 10¢ or less was more than $12 in September — three times the average trade of similarly-priced single markets, despite the combos’ lower odds of paying out. 

In fact, long-shot bets have grown tremendously over the past year, in single and combo markets. Trades priced under 10¢ went from 9.2% of all Kalshi trades in October 2025 to 18.6% in September 2026. Trades under 5¢ went from 4.4% to 12.3%. Trades at 1¢ or less, which our data tracks from March 2026, went from 0.5% to 4.3% of all trades. 

The longer the odds, the faster the growth. This is likely a function of their price. Once upon a time, traders could wager no less than 1¢ on an outcome. Since July, however, traders have been able to bet as little as a tenth of a cent on single markets. Since September 3, they have been able to bet as little as a hundredth of a cent. 

Traders clearly wanted to make cheap bets with enormous potential winnings. They wanted lottery tickets. 

For more on the 90¢ markets and drivers of their growth, as well as what this all means for Kalshi’s status as a prediction market, read our Spotlight here.

Waiting for $7.5B

Ethena’s fee switch passed on September 2 with 17.28M ENA for and non against. But the motion does nothing until USDe supply reaches $7.5B; it is $4.66B today.

Our previous spotlight caught Ethena mid-rebound three weeks ago, which has since stalled. TVL is down 5% over 30 days and 66% below its Oct 2025 peak. Could the source of the missing $2.84B come from Ethena’s new self-custodial neobank, Ethena Pay? It pays up to 6% on USDe balances, and one third-party tracker counts ~1,100 wallets that have received USDe so far.

Card spenders may hold USDe longer than yield farmers do, which could slow or even reverse the decline. For now, Ethena enthusiasts play the waiting game.

The llamas have spent years tracking what protocols earn and which ones get hacked. Now users can hedge risk or trade the revenue meta straight from the platform.

DefiLlama has partnered with Trueo to launch select prediction markets that settle on DefiLlama data. Traders can take a side on whether a protocol clears a monthly revenue target, or hedge against an exploit after gathering community-driven consensus from dashboard data.

20 markets are live right now, including:

Find your Trueo market here.