#预测市场 After reading this article about the risks of prediction market manipulation, a fascinating comparison came to mind — traditional polls are becoming increasingly fragile in the AI era, while prediction markets, driven by real financial incentives, are becoming more robust as information aggregators that are harder to fake. But this is precisely the problem.

Imagine a scenario where fluctuations in prediction market prices directly influence media coverage, which in turn affects public psychology, and could even reverse influence voting outcomes. The entire information ecosystem would turn into a subtle psychological game. Historically, from the 1916 betting markets to the 2024 Polymarket Trump trades, we've seen this pattern repeat — as long as there is enough capital and interest, someone will try to make the market prices lie.

However, there's a key insight: manipulating markets is actually more difficult than it appears. Research by Rhode and Strumpf shows that even if someone manages to push prices up, arbitrageurs will quickly correct the distortions, causing manipulators to suffer losses. The real risk isn't long-term market manipulation, but that even brief price anomalies, under the barrage of AI-generated public opinion, could undermine public confidence in democratic fairness.

This reminds me of the core value of Web3 — transparency and resistance to censorship. If prediction markets could operate entirely on-chain, with transparent and verifiable transactions, manipulation would be impossible to hide. Wouldn't that better address these concerns? The future political information infrastructure should be built on immutable records, not on platform self-regulation. The prospects for decentralized prediction markets have never been more urgent.