Kalshi ends volume incentive program effective October 13

Kalshi is shutting down its Volume Incentive Program, the rewards system that paid traders based on their share of eligible trading activity on the platform. The termination takes effect no earlier than October 13, 2026, following a notice filed on September 28.

How the program worked

The Volume Incentive Program distributed rewards from fixed per-market pools, allocated proportionally based on each participant’s share of eligible volume on Kalshi’s central limit order book.

Not every trade counted. To qualify, transactions had to be executed at prices between $0.03 and $0.97, a range designed to exclude the cheapest lottery-ticket bets and near-certainties that don’t contribute much to genuine price discovery. The maximum reward was capped at $0.005 per contract.

Certain groups were carved out from eligibility entirely. Affiliates of Kalshi, along with participants operating under specific agreements with brokers and market makers, could not collect rewards through the program.

The stated goal was straightforward: enhance liquidity and improve pricing efficiency across Kalshi’s event contract markets, which span topics from elections to economic indicators to crypto-related perpetual futures.

Why it matters for prediction markets

Kalshi occupies an unusual position in this landscape. As a CFTC-regulated exchange, it operates under stricter oversight than most crypto-native prediction platforms. That regulatory relationship likely influenced the decision to wind down the Volume Incentive Program, even if the exchange hasn’t explicitly framed the termination as a response to regulatory pressure.

What Kalshi keeps running

The termination doesn’t mean Kalshi is abandoning incentives altogether. The exchange has separate liquidity-focused incentive arrangements that extend into 2027, suggesting the company is recalibrating rather than retreating.

Short-term trading implications

Traders who were actively optimizing for the incentive program will need to adjust their strategies. The $0.005 per contract cap was modest on a per-trade basis, but participants who structured their activity around maximizing incentive payouts may find that certain trading patterns are no longer profitable without the subsidy.

Disclosure: This article was edited by Estefano Gomez. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.