Author: Golem (@web3_golem)
On July 22, according to sources, the crypto prediction market platform Polymarket is evaluating the possibility of launching its own stablecoin, with the aim of capturing the revenue from the high reserves backed by Circle's USDC. Although Polymarket has not made a final decision, a series of recent actions, including the U.S. Department of Justice ending its investigation into Polymarket and the platform's acquisition of the U.S. compliant trading platform QCX, have led many users to speculate that a token launch is imminent, thus intensifying their interactions.
Rumors of Polymarket's token launch have been circulating since 2024, to the extent that some studios have been batch interacting for as long as a year. So, for users who have never interacted with Polymarket or have low interaction frequency, is it still worthwhile and timely to start engaging with Polymarket now?
Polymarket Remains Competitive After the U.S. Election
Before considering whether it's too late to start interacting with Polymarket, we need to understand the platform's current operational status. Polymarket gained popularity due to the 2024 U.S. Presidential Election, successfully predicting Trump's victory and attracting up to $8 billion in betting funds. However, after the election, Polymarket's media mentions began to decline, leading some to believe that users would massively leave after losing the election prediction topic. But the reality might disappoint them. The following data reveals that beyond the U.S. election hype and political domain, Polymarket remains a popular platform processing tens of thousands of transactions daily and serving tens of thousands of users.
[The rest of the translation follows the same professional and accurate approach, maintaining the original structure and meaning while translating to English.]Among approximately 1.2 million wallets on the Polymarket platform, around 510,000 wallets participate in 5 or more different markets, which is less than 50%. Participating in different markets is considered one of the key dimensions of interacting with Polymarket, and this metric indirectly reflects the number of wallets farming Polymarket airdrops. Considering the previous data of 20,000-30,000 daily active wallets, it can be inferred that only tens of thousands of wallets are continuously farming Polymarket. Compared to public chains with tens of thousands of interaction addresses, this is already a "treasure protocol".
How should retail investors farm now?
In the early years, users speculated about possible dimensions for Polymarket's token airdrop:
Trading volume
Number of trades
Trading frequency
Number of different markets participated
Trading method (market price, limit price, AMM)
Holding time
Single trade volume (e.g., at least one interaction amount greater than $500)
These dimensions are merely a reference. For retail investors, the most important aspects currently might be trading volume, number of trades and frequency, holding time, while controlling input costs. Regarding holding time, players can bet on the "2028 US Presidential Election" prediction pool, as it is large, has a long settlement time with less likelihood of drastic fluctuations, and the platform offers a 4% annual holding reward.
To reduce friction when farming trading volume, crypto blogger SIiipy shared a strategy of finding a low-liquidity prediction pool and using two wallets to trade back and forth, as shown in the following image.
Besides small-amount high-frequency trading, users can also choose to be genuine users, making real bets on the Polymarket platform while hoping for future airdrop opportunities. However, the "nine out of ten bets lose" principle also applies to Polymarket. According to Dune data, only 14.3% of Polymarket users are in a profitable state, while approximately 86% of user accounts have negative balances.
Polymarket positive and negative account balance ratio
Therefore, to reduce interaction costs, a Polymarket gameplay using options arbitrage has emerged. This method is limited to Crypto markets on Polymarket, such as prediction pools like "Will BTC fall below $118,000 on July 28th". The specific operation involves buying a $118,000 put option expiring on July 28th from an exchange, then purchasing a "No" position on Polymarket (betting BTC will not fall below $118,000 on July 28th), thus providing self-hedging. However, players should be aware of time difference risks arising from different settlement times between the exchange and Polymarket. (Related reading: New Polymarket gameplay? Using options arbitrage)
