Clearmatics’ New DeFi Derivatives Let Traders Bet on Anything, but It’s Not a Prediction Market
Clearmatics is launching a novel class of decentralized futures products called forecast markets, built on the upcoming Autonity layer-1 blockchain and the Autonomous Futures Protocol (AFP). These on-chain, dated futures contracts track any public time series data—crypto indexes, inflation, temperature, etc.—resembling prediction markets like Polymarket but with key distinctions.
Unlike prediction markets’ one-off payouts, forecast contracts offer a continuous, symmetrical payoff mirroring the underlying factor, allowing liquidity to build over time and track persistent risks. Clearmatics views these as complementary to prediction markets, serving different needs in managing uncertainty.
Currently, the crypto derivatives space is dominated by perpetual futures. While AFP will support these in a future version, the focus is on on-chain, dated futures tracking real-world risk factors. This opens opportunities for quantitative traders and machine learning researchers to test predictive models on currently untradeable data. Furthermore, it allows hedging against risks for which no financial instruments currently exist.
An example is Singapore’s Certificate of Entitlement (COE) for cars. COE auction prices significantly impact used car values, but currently lack hedging options. A forecast contract tracking COE auctions would enable sellers to hedge their potential earnings.
Autonity and AFP feature a unique architectural separation of exchange and clearing functions. Unlike typical DeFi protocols with vertically integrated architectures, AFP permits permissionless listing on multiple trading venues while maintaining on-chain collateral management and cross-margining. This enhances capital efficiency and solves the fragmentation of open interest common in decentralized derivatives. Clearmatics argues that true decentralization requires trading and exiting positions across various venues, not just a single DEX. The upcoming “Forecastathon” will invite developers to build prototype products on this new infrastructure.
