Prediction market platform Polymarket has teamed up with Palantir and TWG AI to build a monitoring system designed to detect suspicious trading and manipulation in sports prediction markets, a move that reflects growing pressure on the fast-growing sector to establish credibility.

The new system will use Palantir’s data infrastructure and TWG AI’s analytics to monitor trading activity across Polymarket markets. The companies say the platform will detect unusual trading patterns, screen participants and generate compliance reports that could be shared with regulators or sports leagues.

Polymarket founder and CEO Shayne Coplan said the goal is to bring “world-class analytics and monitoring to sports markets” while helping leagues and teams maintain confidence in the integrity of games.

The effort reflects a broader challenge facing prediction markets as they move from niche crypto experiments to platforms that increasingly influence public discussion about elections, economics and sports.

Prediction markets allow users to trade contracts tied to the outcome of real-world events. Because participants put money behind their views, proponents argue the markets can aggregate information efficiently and produce accurate forecasts.

But that same structure creates risks.

Prediction markets have faced criticism in recent years over the possibility that traders with inside knowledge could profit from events before the public becomes aware of them. Markets have emerged around sensitive topics such as policy decisions, military actions, labor strikes and political pardons, raising questions about whether participants might be trading on privileged information.

Carlos Pereira, a general partner at BITKRAFT Ventures, which manages more than $1 billion across investments in gaming, AI and digital assets, said those concerns could become a serious obstacle for the industry if they are not addressed.

“There has been what seems to be insider trading,” he said. “When you have a market that is new and by consequence a little bit fragile, making the news in negative ways can be dangerous.”

The monitoring system Polymarket is building resembles the kind of surveillance infrastructure used by traditional financial exchanges. According to the company, it will track trading before and after orders are placed, flag coordinated activity and identify traders who may be prohibited from participating.

For prediction market operators, the stakes are partly regulatory. Formal insider trading rules for these markets remain unclear in many jurisdictions, particularly in the U.S., where regulators are still debating how to classify them.

Efforts to strengthen monitoring could help the industry demonstrate that it can police itself.

Absent those safeguards, Pereira said regulators may feel pressure to intervene more aggressively.

“If markets don’t show they are trying to manage insider trading,” he said, “the odds of regulation becoming harsher and tapering growth would be much higher."