Experienced Polymarket participants find ways to profit from pricing errors and almost guaranteed event outcomes. While most users try to guess the result, professionals earn from market inefficiencies—without risk or emotion.
Arbitrage instead of betting
Polymarket users’ trading volume and realized profit.
Polymarket has become one of the most profitable areas in decentralized prediction markets. Here, traders don’t play luck—they build algorithms. Differences in quotes, even fractions of a cent, create opportunities for “pure” arbitrage.
A Cornell University study describes Polymarket as “an arbitrage engine, not a casino.” If the total value of all event outcomes is less than $1, a guaranteed profit arises. For example, if the sum is $0.995, you can buy shares of all outcomes and lock in a profit of $0.005, which is a 0.5% risk-free yield.
At first glance, this seems trivial. But on the scale of dozens of such trades per day and capital in the tens of thousands of dollars, the profit becomes impressive.
Algorithm competition
Arbitrage opportunities on Polymarket exist for only a few seconds. Today, they are captured not by people but by bots operating on Polygon nodes. They monitor thousands of events, instantly leveling prices and making trades with minimal delay.
What used to be a “pure risk-free opportunity” has turned into a race of technology and speed. The winners are those who can react and execute operations on the network the fastest. It’s no longer just trading, but a competition of computing power, code, and milliseconds.
“Endgame bet”: profit from certainty
One popular approach among experienced participants is called Endgame Sweep. The essence of the strategy is to buy outcomes that have almost reached 100% probability (0.95–0.99) and hold them until the final market closure.
“It’s an exchange of time for certainty,” explains one trader under the pseudonym Fish.
“When retail players lock in profits at $0.997, large participants calmly take the remaining fractions of a percent—and scale up their returns on volume.”
However, even this method is not without risks. Unforeseen events, cancellations of decisions, or political scandals can overturn what seemed to be an obvious outcome. Sometimes a “black swan” turns a safe deal into a loss.
The role of arbitrage in the ecosystem
Despite the dominance of professionals, arbitrage plays an important role—it makes the market more efficient. Such trades level quotes, increase liquidity, and reduce spreads between outcomes.
According to participants, arbitrageurs and market makers earned over $20 million on Polymarket in the past year. But these profits are concentrated in the hands of a narrow group: according to BlockBeats, only 0.5% of users made more than $1,000 in profit, and 1.7% had a trading volume above $50,000.
What lies ahead for Polymarket
Institutional investments and new yield programs are increasing interest in the platform. In particular, Polymarket already offers 4% per annum on the US 2028 election prediction market. There are also rumors of a possible IPO or token airdrop, which could attract a new wave of participants.
Nevertheless, most users still lose money while a small group of “engineers” build profits on the system’s imperfections.
As analyst Jeremy Whittaker notes:
“Arbitrage on Polymarket is not gambling, but engineering. Here, you earn not on predictions, but on the inefficiency of the system itself.”
Read more: Ethereum moves toward Fusaka implementation: Sepolia testing completed, final stage on Hoodi ahead
