New findings suggest that a tiny fraction of traders are reaping the majority of the benefits on Polymarket, with less than 1% of wallets accounting for roughly half of all profits. A recent study by blockchain analytics firm Solidus Labs discovered that profit distribution on Polymarket is highly uneven, with a minuscule 0.55% of profitable maker wallets and 0.26% of winning taker wallets collectively capturing around 50% of gains between December 2025 and February 2026. This translates to approximately $8 million out of $16 million in profits being accrued by these small groups.
Previous research has shown that a small minority of traders drives price movements, and this new data reinforces the notion that an even smaller subset is accumulating the majority of the profits. The disparity highlights the existence of a structural divide between a small, highly sophisticated group of traders and the broader participant base. While this concentration of wealth does not necessarily imply wrongdoing, it does suggest that some traders possess significant advantages, including greater capital, better infrastructure, and more effective execution strategies.
The report also identifies potential signs of wash trading, with around 15% of volume in certain markets exhibiting patterns consistent with self-trading or economically neutral positions. This phenomenon, which is unique to binary prediction markets, allows traders to buy YES on both sides of a trade within the same time frame, register volume on each leg, and remain economically delta-neutral.
Some of this volume may be attributed to incentive farming rather than pure manipulation, as traders speculate that Polymarket's upcoming POLY airdrop will consider trading volume as a metric for token allocation. The study's findings are based on verifiable on-chain data, but the framing of the report should be considered in the context of Solidus' sales pitch for its surveillance platform, HALO.