Research has shown that a small group of traders are driving the market, but an even smaller group is reaping most of the benefits. A recent report by blockchain analytics firm Solidus Labs found that profit concentration on Polymarket is extreme, with less than 1% of wallets capturing around half of all gains in key markets. Between December 2025 and February 2026, just 0.55% of profitable maker wallets captured 50% of gains, while 0.26% of winning taker wallets accounted for nearly the same share, with roughly $8 million of about $16 million in profits going to each of these small groups.
This data supports previous academic work that found about 3% of Polymarket traders drive most price discovery, and highlights a key point: concentration does not necessarily imply wrongdoing, but rather that some traders are more sophisticated, better capitalized, or faster to act on information. However, the report argues that the scale of the imbalance suggests a structural divide between a small group operating with significant advantages and the broader base of participants. The report also flags signs of wash trading, with roughly 15% of volume in some markets showing patterns consistent with self-trading or economically neutral positions. Solidus says this trade has no equivalent in traditional finance, and some of that volume may be incentive farming rather than pure manipulation, as Polymarket's forthcoming POLY airdrop is speculated to factor in trading volume as a metric to allocate tokens.