Polymarket continued to rebuild its bets, reaching a total of $10B in cumulative prediction positions. The platform remains among the top 5 Polygon apps, driving USDC usage after expanding into small-scale bets with a larger number of active wallets.
Polymarket reached a milestone of $10B in total prediction positions, after recovering from the November 7 lows. The app faces bans and restrictions on one side, and a growing user base with predictions on current events. This has allowed Polymarket to thrive and tap both whale bets and small-scale users.
All the predictions were posted directly on Polygon as token trades, also serving as a test to the Polygon POS network. As a result, the Polygon daily transactions increased from around 1M at the end of October to over 3.4M since November. The transaction count expanded in the past four weeks, from a baseline of 3M transfers to over 3.5M daily transactions.
Polymarket keeps drawing in small-scale predictions beyond the US election
Polymarket invites more than 54,000 active daily users, based on DappRadar data. Pairs and outcomes attract both large-scale whales and small-scale users with bets under $10. The app allows for the placing of bets in markets valued under $2,000. Over time, the bet resolution time is also becoming shorter, tapping events that may be resolved within days. Median resolution time in January is down to 3-4 days, inviting bets on dynamic events from social media with a clear resolution deadline.
Polymarket drew in several segments with small-scale bets under $500, with a large share of bets under $10. | Source: Dune Analytics
The smaller markets led to an expansion of wallets that bet on five or more outcome pairs. The sustainable demand for more predictions helped Polymarket regroup after the concentration of users to one or two top markets. The inflow of users continues, despite the usual ratio of more than 84% of the wallets holding unrealized losses. The high unrealized loss and resolution ratio also means the $10B in bets concentrated in the hands of a small subset of users with odds ranging between 11% and 16% on average.
The biggest segments of prediction buyers are in the bets under $10, between $10 and $100 and $100 to $500. The lowest bets are considered a bid to receive an airdrop based on engagement.
Bets for non-election predictions also have a smaller average size of $178. The presence of whales and large-scale buyers expanded election bets to an average of $292. Those bets were distributed over a user base of over 4M cumulative unique addresses.
After the end of the biggest bets on the US elections, new users that never predicted those markets flowed into the app. Up to 48.8% of users after November 6 made only non-election bets, driving sports, current events, crypto and other pairs. Total users are still close to the highest level for the past three months.
The small-scale bets and the inflow of users is seen as a response to new betting proposals, and as an attempt to gain access to an eventual Polymarket airdrop.
Will Polymarket revive POL?
The success of Polymarket raises questions on the Polygon native token, POL. The asset has been sliding since its rebrand from MATIC, but there are expectations for a breakout.
POL is not used to make predictions, but is required to pay gas fees for all apps. The token lags after games and NFT collections slowed down on the legacy chain.
The November peak for Polymarket boosted POL to a local peak above $0.70. Currently, POL is at around $0.44, with expectations for a local bottom. Analysts see POL break out to repeat the 2021 rally.
Currently, around 87% of the tokens are swapped, with some of the assets stuck on exchanges that have not cooperated with the team.
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