Stories
Everything we have published, newest first. No order is required; read whatever answers the question in front of you.
What Is a Prediction Market?
A prediction market is a market in contracts that pay a fixed amount if a defined event happens. The price is what people will pay for that payoff right now — useful as a probability estimate, but not a fact about the world.
Bid, Ask, Spread, Depth, and the Price You Can Actually Trade
Last trade, midpoint, bid, and ask are different numbers, and the one a venue displays is a formatting choice. The price you can actually get also depends on how much depth exists for the size you need.
How YES and NO Contracts Resolve
YES and NO settle from written contract terms: the condition, deadline, time zone, resolution source, and the rules for messy edge cases.
What one academic paper documented about complementary-price extraction on Polymarket
Saguillo et al. (AFT 2025) classified complementary-price, NegRisk, and combinatorial extraction on markets that resolved 1 April 2024 to 1 April 2025 and reported $39,587,585.02. That is a pre-fee, dated measurement — not “bots made $40 million,” and not a claim the same gaps are still there in 2026.
What one paper documented about why naive Polymarket volume overcounts
Tsang and Yang (arXiv:2603.03136, current version 11 August 2026) reconstruct the 2024 Presidential Election Winner market. Raw OrderFilled aggregation reports $958.478 million of October Trump-market volume; their exchange-equivalent turnover is $391.030 million. That is a 2024 accounting result — not a 15 August 2026 volume, and not a claim the number on a live page is wrong.
How many Polymarket wallets are in profit — and why 16% and 30% are both in the literature
Sergeenkov’s all-address cut through 1 April 2026 is 15.9% in realized profit. DeFi Oasis and a Reichenbach & Walther author note sit near 30%. The difference is mostly method. None of these is an “active trader” rate.
What a 65% Prediction-Market Price Means (and What It Does Not)
Read 65 cents as a market-implied probability of roughly 65% for one contract at one moment, measured one specific way—not certainty, not a poll, and not a promise. The 65% used here is a worked example, not a live quote.
What one paper documented about last-second settlement on Polymarket’s five-minute Bitcoin markets
Dai, Jia and Yu (arXiv:2606.31675, current version 11 August 2026) classified about 1,600 five-minute Bitcoin cycles as likely manipulated and attributed $8.2 million in those cycles to 821 wallets. That is a profit-based, pre-TWAP measurement — not a finding of legal fraud, and not a claim the same windows still exist after 7 August 2026.
What public data actually says about wallets that end in profit
Opened pages support concentration, short-lived high-monthly-profit addresses, and make-versus-take. Hold time, copy-trading, off-peak hours, and a preferred event type are UNKNOWN. One 2024–25 paper documents complementary-price extraction as an activity — not as advice.
Why Complementary Prices Should Add Up to About a Dollar
Yes and No are two sides of one dollar of collateral. A sum under $1 or over $1 is a fact about complementary prices — before fees, spread, and fill risk — not a verdict that the event is wrong.
Why the Number on the Screen Is Not Always the Number You Can Trade
The displayed price is often a midpoint. Buyers pay the ask. Taker fees apply on many categories. A Yes+No sum that looks like $1 can still not be a lock.
Markets Are Not Polls
A prediction-market price is a tradeable claim with a named payoff. A poll percentage is a different forecasting object. The same numeral does not make them the same measurement.
What a Negative-Risk Multi-Outcome Event Is
A simple market is two tokens. A negative-risk event links several of those markets so that one No can convert into a Yes on every other outcome. That is a conversion machine — not a promise that you cannot lose, and not a live book that sums to a dollar.
How to Read an Event Page Versus a Market Page
Official docs treat an event as a container and a market as the Yes/No book. The documented path — /event/ versus /market/ — is how you tell which object you opened. A matching headline is not identity.
How to compare two contracts on the same question
Two venues can quote the same headline and still be selling different contracts. Check the wording, the source, and the deadline before you compare the numbers.
What the Documented Venue Means by a Market Order
On the documented venue, every user-facing order is a limit order. A "market order" is that same order priced to cross the book. The estimate is a snapshot. Delayed is not a fill.
How Split, Merge, and Redeem Work
Split turns a dollar of pUSD into a Yes and a No. Merge turns that complete pair back into a dollar. Redeem pays the winning token after resolution. All three sit outside the order book — not a how-to, and not a live book that sums to a dollar.