Is It Still Worth It to Participate in Polymarket Now? What Is the Best Strategy for Retail Investors?
分享到朋友或朋友圈
Original | Odaily Planet Daily (@OdailyChina)
Author｜Golem (@web3_golem)
On July 22, according to informed sources, the crypto prediction market platform Polymarket is evaluating the possibility of launching its own stablecoin, aiming to control the profits brought by the high reserves supported by Circle's USDC. Although Polymarket has not made a final decision, combined with recent actions such as the U.S. Department of Justice ending its investigation into Polymarket and the platform's acquisition of the U.S. compliant trading platform QCX, many users speculate that Polymarket's token issuance is on the way, thus increasing the frequency of interactions.
Rumors about Polymarket's token issuance have been mentioned since 2024, leading some studios to batch interact for up to a year. So, for users who have never interacted with Polymarket or have done so infrequently, is it still necessary and timely to start interacting with Polymarket now?
After the U.S. electionPolymarket platform remains competitive
Before considering whether it's timely to start interacting with Polymarket now, we need to understand the current operational status of the Polymarket platform. Polymarket's popularity stemmed from the 2024 U.S. presidential election, gaining fame for successfully predicting Trump's victory and handling up to $80 billion in betting funds during the period. However, after the U.S. election, mentions of Polymarket in the media began to decline, leading some to believe that without the U.S. election as a prediction topic, Polymarket would lose a large number of users. But the facts might disappoint them. The following data reveals that after the U.S. election hype and beyond the political field, Polymarket remains a popular platform handling hundreds of thousands of transactions daily and serving tens of thousands of users every day.
According to Dune data, starting from May 2024, Polymarket's daily active wallet count grew from almost 0 to 70,000 over six months. Although there was a decline in wallet activity from late January to early February 2025 due to Trump's official inauguration, it subsequently recovered. Currently, Polymarket's daily active wallet count remains at 20,000-30,000, which, although incomparable to Meme launch platforms like Pump.fun in terms of daily activity, still leads L2s like Starknet and ZKsync. Maintaining high wallet activity after the hype also validates Polymarket's solid product-market fit.
Similarly, Polymarket's daily transaction count peaked during the 2024 U.S. election, nearing 500,000 transactions. But even after the election cooled down, Polymarket's platform transaction count remains above 100,000. This means that although Polymarket's usage has declined since the election, it has retained a large number of loyal users compared to before 2024.
According to Dune data, Polymarket's monthly trading volume peaked in November 2024 at $2.5 billion. But after the election, from February 2025 to the present, Polymarket's platform still maintains a monthly trading volume of $700 million to $1.1 billion. According to DeFiLlama data, over the past 30 days, Polymarket's trading volume ranks 40th, ahead of established DEXs like Sushi and GMX.
The above chart reflects the proportion of users who have never participated in the U.S. election market. It can be seen that after the U.S. election, the total number of wallets decreased, but the number of wallets that have never participated in the U.S. election remains stable, indicating that although Polymarket lost a large number of short-term speculative users after the election, the loyal platform users did not significantly decrease. The proportion of users who have never participated in the U.S. election market is gradually increasing.
The above chart reflects Polymarket's monthly new users. The U.S. election period was when Polymarket had the most monthly new users, but it was also the main growth period for the platform. However, after the U.S. election, as speculators left, Polymarket has maintained a monthly growth of 110,000 to 140,000 accounts since March 2025. This shows that beyond the U.S. election, Polymarket's other prediction fields are still attracting players, and it also represents a 'major reshuffle' in Polymarket's platform user composition from short-term hot event speculation to long-term use.The above chart reflects the number of prediction pools on the Polymarket platform each month. It can be seen that since 2025, the number of prediction pools each month on Polymarket has been more than during the 2024 U.S. election. In May and June 2025, the number of prediction pools even exceeded 5,000, reaching 6,771 and 8,238 respectively. This means that Polymarket's prediction betting fields are continuously expanding, potentially attracting more players interested in different fields.
Is it still timely to interact with Polymarket now?
From the above data, the Polymarket platform is not outdated, and such projects with product-market fit are also hot in the financing market. According to Rootdata, Polymarket has completed 3 rounds of financing totaling $74 million, and according to June news, Polymarket is seeking nearly $200 million in financing at a valuation of over $1 billion.
For an application like Polymarket that has influenced traditional political media and brought crypto to the forefront, a $1 billion valuation is actually not high. If it really issues a token, even airdropping 10% of the token supply to platform users could be a big deal. So, considering whether it's timely to interact with Polymarket now is actually considering the degree of platform user involution and various transaction costs.
The above chart reflects the distribution of betting funds among Polymarket users. As shown, over 90% of users' betting funds are below $500, and whales betting $5,000-$10,000 account for only 0.4%. Therefore, if Polymarket's airdrop conditions include transaction rankings, currently ranking in the top 10% is not difficult, which also reflects that interacting with Polymarket now is not highly competitive, as most people are still at the stage of small-amount, low-frequency transactions to increase volume and count.
Among Polymarket's approximately 1.2 million wallets, about 510,000 have participated in 5 or more different markets, less than 50%. Participating in different markets is also considered one of the important dimensions of interacting with Polymarket. This indicator also reflects the number of wallets aiming for Polymarket's airdrop. Combined with the aforementioned data of Polymarket's daily active wallets being 20,000-30,000, it can be inferred that only tens of thousands of wallets are continuously interacting with Polymarket across the network. Compared to public chains with hundreds of thousands of interaction addresses, this is already a 'treasure protocol'.
Transaction volume
Transaction count
Transaction frequency
Number of different markets participated in
Transaction method (market price, limit price, AMM)
Holding time
Single transaction volume (e.g., at least one interaction amount greater than $500)
The above dimensions are just a reference. As a retail investor, the most important dimensions to focus on now might be transaction volume, transaction count and frequency, and holding time, while controlling the cost of investment. For holding time, players can bet on the '2028 U.S. Presidential Election', as this prediction pool is large, the settlement time is far away, making it less prone to剧烈波动, and there's an official 4% annualized holding reward.
For increasing transaction volume, to reduce wear and tear, crypto blogger SIiipy shared his strategy: find a prediction pool with poor liquidity and use two wallets to trade back and forth, as shown in the figure below.
Besides the above small-amount, high-frequency strategy, users can also choose to be real users, placing real bets on the Polymarket platform while aiming for future airdrop opportunities. But the saying 'nine out of ten gamblers lose' also applies to Polymarket. According to Dune data, only 14.3% of Polymarket users are in profit, while about 86% have negative account balances.
New玩法 on Polymarket? Using options for arbitrage)
