Prediction market data is getting the Wall Street treatment. DoubleZero, the high-performance network layer best known in crypto circles, has added real-time order-book data from Kalshi’s election and politics markets to its DoubleZero Edge distribution platform, just as betting activity on the November US midterms surges past every prior election cycle.
The expansion, announced on September 9, adds Kalshi’s election contracts to a feed that already carries data from the prediction market’s sports contracts and its crypto perpetual futures. Subscribers now receive top-of-book pricing, full-depth order-book data and completed trades from Kalshi’s political markets over dedicated fiber, delivered as a single multicast broadcast rather than the request-response model of a public API.
## Election Betting Is Now a Serious Market
The timing is no accident. According to data from the Anti-Corruption Data Collective, wagering on the 2026 US midterms had reached 133 million USD as of August 10, already surpassing the 92.4 million USD bet across the entire 2024 congressional election cycle. At the time of the announcement, a single Kalshi market asking which party will win the US House had recorded more than 35 million USD in trading volume, with Democratic victory odds priced around 84 percent.
That kind of volume attracts professional trading firms, and professional firms compete on speed. Andy Ross, head of institutional at Kalshi, said the integration is intended to make political market data easier to incorporate into institutional workflows as expectations shift around election outcomes.
## Open Access, Not a Private Club
The move has raised an obvious fairness question: if a handful of firms receive the order book milliseconds faster over private fiber, do retail traders on the public internet get a worse deal? DoubleZero co-founder Austin Federa addressed that concern directly in comments to crypto.news, arguing that open access is the answer rather than the problem.
The fastest data path should not be private rails at unreachable price levels, Federa said. By placing Kalshi election market data on DoubleZero rails, anyone, from anywhere, can subscribe to the same stream. Access requires a paid subscription, but there is no sales process or gatekeeping: customers buy the feed through DoubleZero’s website, the subscription is tied to a cryptographic identity and the receiving machine’s internet address, and a single command installs a connector that builds a private tunnel into the network and starts serving data locally as JSON.
Federa also stressed what the product does not do. DoubleZero Edge is a read-only distribution platform with no execution functionality. Participants cannot submit, route or complete trades through the infrastructure. Orders still pass through Kalshi’s own trading systems, leaving DoubleZero as purely a transport layer between the source data and subscribers.
## Why Multicast Changes the Game
Traditional exchanges like the New York Stock Exchange, Nasdaq and CME publish their data once and broadcast it to all subscribers simultaneously over private fiber, a technique known as multicast. Kalshi’s public API and WebSocket, by contrast, require each firm to maintain its own connection, receive its own copy of the data, and rebuild the order book from separate responses, with delivery times varying by network route.
DoubleZero applies the exchange model to a prediction market for the first time. Data leaves Kalshi through the fastest direct interface available to institutional participants, travels across dedicated fiber, and reaches every subscriber as the same sequenced message at the same time. That removes the duplication work each firm previously handled and ensures a consistent view of the book.
DoubleZero has not yet published latency figures comparing the two approaches. Federa said benchmark data on the delivery layer, including update speed, sequencing consistency and freshness relative to public-internet feeds, will be released during initial product testing. Market-quality metrics like spreads and depth belong to Kalshi, he noted: the company will publish data on delivery, but not venue scorecards.
## A Bigger Debate Over Prediction Markets
The technical upgrade lands in the middle of a legal fight over prediction markets in the United States. Conflicting state and federal court rulings could divide prediction-market access between states, with the core dispute centering on whether federal oversight of designated contract markets prevents states from applying their own gambling laws. Aaron Courtney, chief compliance officer at ProphetX, has warned that the split could leave users in some states with access to federally regulated platforms while users elsewhere face restrictions.
Kalshi itself keeps expanding on the derivatives side. On September 4, the CFTC-regulated exchange added five crypto perpetual futures tied to BNB, Cardano, Worldcoin, Aave and Venice Token, bringing its lineup to Bitcoin plus 17 altcoin contracts. Its event contracts face separate scrutiny: CME Group has challenged the CFTC’s treatment of Kalshi’s Bitcoin perpetual, and the exchange banned former congressman George Santos on August 31 after its compliance department found he had traded both sides of a market about his own attendance at the 2026 State of the Union, earning 17,839 USD before a permanent ban and penalties.
For traders watching the midterms, the message from DoubleZero is simple: the election order book now moves at exchange speed, and the door is technically open to anyone willing to subscribe. Whether that levels the playing field or simply professionalizes it faster will become clear as November approaches.
Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice. Cryptocurrency markets are volatile; always do your own research before investing.
everyone quoting the 133M midterm figure while skipping that edge already carried kalshi sports and perps. this was a bundling play, political contracts were just the missing shelf
the multicast part is what matters here. nyse and cme have broadcast data over private fiber for decades and kalshi was making firms rebuild the order book over websockets like its 2013
agreed, rebuilding full depth over websockets in 2026 was genuinely embarrassing for a CFTC regulated market. andy ross saying the quiet part out loud, the pro firms were never going to tolerate that
^ this. and worth remembering DoubleZero Edge is read only, zero execution. federa was clear its a transport layer, not some backdoor trading rail
exactly, and the bandwidth argument is undersold. a full depth feed pushed once over multicast beats hundreds of websocket clients each rebuilding state from scratch. firms were paying colocation money for 2013 delivery
right, and the fan out matters more than the latency. one multicast stream serving every subscriber beats hundreds of websocket sessions each rebuilding state, the exchange side saves real infra money too
multicast broadcast instead of request-response is the actual story here. everyone obsessing over the 133M midterm number while DoubleZero quietly builds the pipes
fred is right, the delivery mechanism matters more than the politics. first firm to get top of book a few ms early wins the arb
133 million wagered on midterms as of August 10, versus 92.4 million for the entire 2024 cycle. Election betting quietly went mainstream and almost nobody has priced what that means for order flow.
agreed, and once political order flow is on the same pipe as sports and perps, prop desks will cross hedge all three against each other. the boring transport upgrade is what makes that desk possible
cross hedging midterm contracts against sports and perps is going to mint some bizarre implied correlations. wait until a desk packages a house-control scenario with a parlay leg and files it as a structured product
133M by August 10 vs 92.4M for the ENTIRE 2024 cycle is wild. by november this could be 3x anything we have seen
3x is conservative imo. the house market alone is at 35M with dem odds pinned at 84 percent, that kind of one sided pricing keeps drawing hedgers in. volume snowballs into november
one sided pricing is its own signal tho. 84 percent pinned odds means anyone hedging event risk pays through the nose for the other side, which is exactly the flow that keeps volume compounding into november
this is the point tho seb, one sided pricing is free alpha for whoever can fade it. if 84 pct is stale the fiber is how you find out first
Priya N. 133M by august 10 with three months still left. at this pace november clears 400M easy
everyone in here arguing electoral odds while the actual early trade is whoever colocates their ingestion next to the DoubleZero endpoint first. transport alpha decays fast but the first movers eat well
delta_skew_ the colo race matters less here than you think. multicast broadcast means every subscriber gets the same tick off the wire, latency edge shrinks down to pure physics
delta_skew_ colocating ingestion is a weekend project, the moat is zero. physics edges decay in weeks not months
35M volume on the house control market alone and dem odds pinned at 84 pct. firms arent buying dedicated fiber because the election is uncertain, theyre buying it because everyone else already has it
The interesting part for me is completed trades in the feed. Last tick on a political market is noise, but seeing actual fills tells you where real money cleared the book.
Tomasz Wilk completed trades is the only honest signal on political contracts. last tick can be one stale limit order sitting there all day, fills tell you where money actually moved
133M bet on midterms by august 10 and people still call prediction markets a niche. kalshi full depth order book over dedicated fiber is straight up wall street infra
qt_cap 133M by aug 10 already beat the whole 2024 cycle at 92.4M, niche label died this summer. fiber feeds on political fills is just the market admitting its size
Completed trades in the feed is the sleeper feature. last tick on an 84 pct pinned market tells you nothing, fills tell you everything