TBD, a prediction market protocol built on Solana, has secured $3 million in a seed funding round and launched publicly after concluding its private beta. The round was co-led by CMT Digital and ParaFi Capital, with participation from Jump Crypto. CMT and ParaFi each received board observer seats as part of the investment, which closed earlier this month, according to TBD co-founder and CEO Corey Miller.
The seed round follows an earlier $800,000 angel round that included notable investors such as Slow Ventures general partner Sam Lessin, Solana co-founder Raj Gokal, Polygon Labs CEO Mark Boiron, Wintermute founder Evgeny Gaevoy, and dYdX founder Antonio Juliano. Miller, a former dYdX product lead, founded TBD last year with Taehoon Lee, a former senior engineer at dYdX.
The protocol's core innovation is pairing verified human polling with permissionless prediction market trading. Polls are conducted through a World ID–gated voting app, ensuring only uniquely verified humans can vote. Simultaneously, a corresponding prediction market is launched on a separate platform where anyone, including automated systems, can trade on the poll's outcome. Every market on TBD is tied to a poll, focusing exclusively on "digital elections" rather than general event-based markets like those on Polymarket or Kalshi.
"We are building TBD to discover human sentiment in a digitally native, AI-resistant, and economically sustainable manner," said Miller, highlighting the challenge of measuring real opinions in an internet flooded with synthetic content.
The private beta demonstrated significant traction, concluding with more than 4,000 markets created and over 19 million votes cast from more than 225,000 unique global participants. Voters earn USDC for participating, funded by poll creators who distribute a prize pool. TBD also plans to introduce revenue sharing from trading fees to further incentivize voters. The protocol currently runs on Solana but is designed to make blockchain interactions invisible to users, with goals to expand accessibility across major platforms.
The three-person team, based in New York, plans to roughly double its headcount across engineering and growth roles. While currently using World ID for verification, TBD is exploring additional methods, including zkTLS-based tools.
