Polymarket Founder Shayne Coplan: Former Zora CEO Jacob Horne Joins to Develop Products
Polymarket founder Shayne Coplan announced that former Zora CEO Jacob Horne has joined to develop products, focusing on improving the on-chain DeFi side. When Horne launched the first version of Zora in 2020, Coplan was one of the earliest users. The company will hold a DeFi user briefing to gather feedback from old users.
Horne just stepped down nine days ago. Zora co-founder Dee Goens has taken over as CEO, and the team has been reduced to fewer than ten people this year. The protocol fees on Base have dropped by about 99% year-on-year, and the quarterly revenue from creator tokens fell from approximately $5.64 million in Q3 2025 to about $107,000 in Q2 2026. Horne previously worked at Coinbase, developing the NFT marketplace, Ethereum Layer 2, and turning every homepage into a tradable token. After his departure, he stated that he would soon announce his next job, which is in the prediction market.
Coplan acknowledged that on-chain products have deteriorated with scale, and old users feel the company has shifted all its focus to U.S. compliance. His response is to integrate the two product sides behind the scenes rather than abandon DeFi. Polymarket now effectively operates two systems: an overseas on-chain prediction market and U.S. regulated contracts that will be launched after acquiring a licensed derivatives exchange through the CFTC path. ICE previously invested $2 billion at a valuation of about $9 billion and distributed market data to financial institutions; recently, they appointed former Amazon CFO Warren Jenson as the first CFO.
The hiring list also reveals the focus. The positions include crypto product manager, DeFi liquidity head, and U.S. derivatives compliance and institutional onboarding. Competitor Kalshi leads in regulated transactions. Brand endorsements and sports content are ramping up U.S. traffic, while on-chain delays and experiences are complaints from crypto-native markets.
The personnel changes indicate a shift from "media-style minting" to "building trading infrastructure". Zora turns content into tradable tokens, while Polymarket turns events into tradable contracts; Horne needs to address order books, on-chain execution, and performance at scale, rather than launching another social token. The briefing aims to bring back lost on-chain market makers and early users for review.
The market mechanism involves a dual-track resource competition under the same brand. Buyers include institutions needing U.S. compliant markets and crypto users wanting permissionless on-chain markets; sellers must separate engineering bandwidth between the two clearing systems at Polymarket. Beneficiaries are products that can integrate U.S. stock-level distribution with on-chain settlement; pressured parties include the already slowed DeFi front end and Zora, which needs the next step after creator token revenues collapsed. Funding and attention are shifting from NFT social to the compliance expansion of prediction contracts.
Source: Public Information
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Coplan bet in 2020 that "event prices are more honest than commentators," and the 2024 election has turned the market into a media reference source, with ICE's investment in 2025 boosting the valuation to about $9 billion. U.S. licensing requires a different narrative of clearing, monitoring, and insider trading prohibition, which is incompatible with his defense of "information trading" at Harvard. Thus, the company has become two Polymarkets sharing one name. Asking Horne to return to manage DeFi acknowledges to old on-chain users that U.S. expansion has diluted the original product.
The capital path follows exchange logic, not protocol logic. ICE's investment is in data distribution and bringing prediction contracts to brokerage terminals; the CFO from Amazon manages capital structure and the pace of U.S. expansion. Horne brings the ability to smooth minting, on-chain payments, and social interactions. Money flows towards licensed entities, endorsements, and U.S. customer acquisition, while on-chain performance becomes a necessary technical debt to address, or else crypto-native liquidity will migrate to other markets.
Analogies must be named. Robinhood is also a retail entry supporting licensed brokers, with on-chain being just a later addition; Uniswap insists on protocol, leaving compliance front ends to others. Polymarket wants both ends: Kalshi is capturing regulated transactions, while the on-chain market is targeting global unaccounted users. Zora's transition from the NFT market to creator tokens and subsequent layoffs indicates that "turning everything into tokens" cannot retain the team after revenue collapse. Horne's change of track means bringing market experience into the event market.
Structural judgment belongs to industry chain reconstruction. The prediction market is being dismantled from a crypto experiment into "regulated derivatives + on-chain AMM/order book", with reconstruction occurring at clearing and user entry, not in the underlying assets themselves. The mechanism is that U.S. transactions require licenses, while global transactions require performance; one cannot simultaneously satisfy the CFTC and gas fees, hence the use of two products under one brand, with a product head to stitch the experience together. If stitching fails, the brand may split into two valuations.
ABAB News · Cognitive Law
License expansion will first drain the original product's engineering time
Two clearing systems under the same brand mean fighting two wars simultaneously
Those who turn content into tokens often move on to turn events into contracts