(This settles EOY if necessary but we will surely know much sooner)
Resolution criteria
The market resolves YES if independent testing confirms the Donut Battery contains less than 0.1% lithium by weight. The market resolves NO if testing confirms lithium content at or above 0.1% by weight. Resolution will be determined by peer-reviewed analysis, official company disclosure with third-party verification, or independent laboratory testing from credible institutions (e.g., VTT Technical Research Centre, university materials science departments, or certified battery analysis labs). Links to testing results and composition data will serve as primary resolution sources.
Background
Donut Lab announced at CES 2026 that it had developed an all-solid-state battery with claimed energy density of 400 Wh/kg, five-minute charging capability, 100,000-cycle lifespan, and materials made from "100% green and abundant materials with global availability." After initial test results were published, several battery experts publicly challenged the claim that the cell operates without lithium, with specialists pointing out that charging curves and additional data indicated it could be a lithium-ion cell. The company could be using an anode-free sodium-metal battery instead of lithium metal anodes.
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Does the battery in question have to live up to some or all of the other claimed specifications to count? What happens if this is a case of fraud or misrepresentation, and we end up in a weird state where it seems like things that meet the claims contain lithium, but there isn't a released battery, or the released battery is lithium-free and doesn't live up to the claims despite early independent testing on some (presumably different) battery matching the other claims?
I think some of the confusion here is around the terminology "lithium ion battery".
Lithium is an element. Lithium ion batteries is a term that through meaning shift has come to mean a certain class of battery chemistries that use lithium as the ion, but there are other batteries that use lithium as their ion, such as "Lithium METAL batteries," as well as Li-S or Li-air batteries, which confusingly do not fall under the category of "lithium ion batteries" These still use lithium as the mobile ion but do not use lithium-metal-oxide cathodes, so they're not classified as "lithium ion batteries".
It appears possible to me that Donut Battery is claiming to have a sodium ion chemistry (or perhaps something even more exotic?!) but it's also quite plausible that they're using one of these other battery chemistries that still use lithium but don't fall under the narrow domain of "lithium ion batteries".
Source: me, a PhD in materials science, who worked in the same lab as lithium ion battery researchers for several years.
@bens on top of all of this, Lithium is unequivocally a "100% green and abundant" material. I think there's some confusion around this. It's not the lithium itself that is rare, it's that certain classes of lithium compounds and minerals might be less abundant. For example, lithium cobalt oxide is not abundant, due to the, ummm, cobalt.
@bens bro these youtubers don't know what they're talking about lol
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H45HXs4xXfA
I'm fully willing to believe that the Donut Battery is not worth the hype, and is just a normal or marginally better than SOTA battery (which isn't good because of, y'know, manufacturing concerns external to explicit performance), and in fact, that seems the most likely outcome.
But this video is complete BS. Also operating on false pretenses. The battery was never claiming to be "the first solid-state battery" or "lithium-free", these are just misinterpretations of their claims.
@bens I was under the impression lithium was geopolitically sensitive despite the relative abundancy. But I do think given they don't shy away from impressive claims, they would have actually said "lithium-free" if it were and I can't find that quote directly from them anywhere. Thanks for the heads up!
I'm confused, when did they claim that their battery is lithium free? I'm also confused by the hype around the "solid-state" terminology. I saw articles claiming that this was the first solid-state battery, which is insane. There are already tons of "solid-state" batteries, many of which use lithium as the mobile ion.
@SIMOROBO this doesn't say their battery is lithium free. It says "lower cost than lithium-ion". "Lithium-ion batteries" are not an entirely inclusive set of all batteries containing lithium.
"Donut Battery is designed to scale globally without supply chain bottlenecks, cost volatility, or geopolitical dependency.
- 100% green and abundant materials with global availability
- No reliance on rare or geopolitically sensitive resources
- Lower material cost than lithium-
ion"
They also said so on many occasions at CES, and it's in many videos. You can also check Ziroth and Twobitdavinci, both speculating on whether that's possible.
@SIMOROBO sounds like these youtubers just literally don't know what "lithium ion battery" means lmao. Science communicators have no f***ing clue
@adonisds I have long said that a key for manifold is to gain the confidence of users so that making a 100,000 market is a common thing. There are so many cases in the world where people pay way more than that amount of money to get answers to questions. They just have names like "consultant" and similar.
If you think that you can gain even a small edge by having a question exist, instead of not exist, and you think that more eyeballs will help with that edge, it seems like a totally worthwhile thing to try. Every once in a while, you will strike gold because some random person will have a rational strong case for something you were not aware of.
@Eliza @adonisds somebody wrote a book on the power of prediction markets a while back. The writing is not very good but otherwise I recommend it. :)
https://www.amazon.com/Microprediction-Building-Open-AI-Network/dp/0262047322