{ "schemaVersion": "vultax-public-research-data-v1", "articleUrl": "https://vultax.com/research/polymarket-longshot-insider-screen-base-rate", "datasets": [ { "title": "Historical results: the tight screen (new wallets, one market, 48 hours)", "columns": [ { "name": "Group", "unit": null }, { "name": "Bets", "unit": null }, { "name": "Won", "unit": null }, { "name": "Average price", "unit": null }, { "name": "Against the price (95% interval)", "unit": null }, { "name": "Gap to established wallets, matched (95% interval)", "unit": null } ], "rows": [ [ "Tight group", "1,331", "20.1%", "22.5¢", "−2.4¢ (−6.9 to +2.8)", "−5.2¢ (−10.7 to +0.1)" ], [ "Tight group, age confirmed", "1,036", "19.3%", "22.8¢", "−3.5¢ (−7.6 to +1.0)", "−6.1¢ (−11.4 to −1.0)" ], [ "Tight group, second implementation", "1,339", "—", "—", "—", "−5.8¢ (−11.3 to −0.4)" ], [ "Established wallets", "27,552", "25.8%", "25.6¢", "+0.2¢ (−0.9 to +1.3)", "—" ], [ "All bets within 48 hours", "88,604", "25.3%", "25.5¢", "−0.1¢ (−1.1 to +0.9)", "—" ] ], "measurementContext": "HISTORICAL, BEFORE CORRECTION. Qualifying long-shot bets in settled Polymarket markets, 1 January 2025 to 28 April 2026. Against the price is the win rate minus the average price paid, in cents a share. Matched gaps compare bets in the same category, price, time to the outcome and half-year; intervals resample whole markets 2,000 times. The second implementation prices entry as the literal stake-weighted mean, which admits 1,339 bets. Established wallets are at least 90 days old at the bet, first seen from February 2025, with ten or more other markets before it.", "sources": [ { "label": "Boka Qin and Rui Yang — Polymarket-v1 Database (TimeSeventeen)", "url": "https://huggingface.co/datasets/TimeSeventeen/Polymarket-v1", "note": "Historical fill and aligned-market input used in this analysis, published under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Vultax applied the stated screen and calculations; the underlying dataset is not Vultax-owned. Accompanying paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.04217." }, { "label": "Anti-Corruption Data Collective — Classifying Insider Trading Risk: Analyzing the Longshot Betting Ecosystem on Polymarket", "url": "https://acdatacollective.org/work/classifying-insider-trading-risk-analyzing-the-longshot-betting-ecosystem-on-polymarket/", "note": "August 2026. Defines a long-shot bet as \"more than $2500 wagered at 35 cents or less\" and the wallet profile as betting in a small number of markets and on very few topics with a success rate above 75%. Settled markets through 5 May 2026; 12,355 long-shot wallets classified, 556 of them matching the profile." }, { "label": "Reuters — More than 150 Polymarket wallets may have traded on military secrets, research finds", "url": "https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/more-than-150-polymarket-wallets-may-have-traded-military-secrets-research-finds-2026-08-20/", "note": "20 August 2026. First report of the study; renders the threshold as at least $2,500 placed cumulatively in an hour or less at odds of 35% or lower. 152 wallets concentrated on military and defence markets, about $8 million won at an average 97.2% win rate against roughly 52% for long-shot bets in those markets generally." }, { "label": "CNN — Polymarket referred dozens of possible military insider trading cases to DOJ, source says", "url": "https://www.cnn.com/2026/08/21/politics/polymarket-doj-military-prediction-market", "note": "21 August 2026. A senior Polymarket official said the referrals predated the report and that internal surveillance monitors around 150 further signals and trading patterns. Polymarket has not been accused of wrongdoing; the Department of Justice did not comment." }, { "label": "Polymarket — Market Integrity Policy", "url": "https://integrity.polymarket.com/", "note": "The venue's own policy: trading on stolen or confidential information and trading by anyone positioned to influence an outcome are prohibited; real-time surveillance and referral to law enforcement are described." }, { "label": "Bloomberg Businessweek — Polymarket and Kalshi Grapple With a New Era of Insider Traders", "url": "https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2026-polymarket-traders-who-knew-the-future/", "note": "20 July 2026. About 34,000 Polymarket transactions flagged by Polysights between August 2025 and June 2026; 57% of flagged wallets created less than 24 hours before their flagged trades; 38 connected wallets across 90 Iran and Venezuela markets won 98% of them for about $1.6 million. A flag is not presented as proof of wrongdoing." }, { "label": "The Wall Street Journal — Cluster of Polymarket Accounts Won Big on Companies Audited by KPMG", "url": "https://www.wsj.com/business/c-suite/cluster-of-polymarket-accounts-won-big-on-companies-audited-by-kpmg-b4d322f7", "note": "11 September 2026. Bubblemaps clustering linked 19 accounts that went 41 for 42 on earnings bets across roughly 18 KPMG audit clients from November 2025, for about $22,000. KPMG cited zero tolerance for misuse of non-public client information; Bubblemaps said clustering alone does not prove insider trading." }, { "label": "Mitts and Ofir — From Iran to Taylor Swift: Informed Trading in Prediction Markets", "url": "https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=6426778", "note": "SSRN working paper, March 2026. Every Polymarket contract from February 2024 to February 2026 scored on bet size, profitability, pre-event timing and directional concentration: 210,718 suspicious wallet-market pairs, a 69.9% win rate more than 60 standard deviations above a permutation null, about $143 million of anomalous profit." }, { "label": "Nechepurenko — Per-Market Information Leakage and Order-Flow Skill", "url": "https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.02287", "note": "May 2026. Sets out the limitation of an outcome-conditioned score: profitability is only known at resolution, so the screen gives no real-time signal and does not separate skill from luck on its own." }, { "label": "CFTC — Enforcement Division issues Prediction Markets Advisory", "url": "https://www.cftc.gov/PressRoom/PressReleases/9185-26", "note": "25 February 2026. Names insider trading, fraud and manipulation, wash sales and pre-arranged trading as conduct the Commission polices on any designated contract market." }, { "label": "Polymarket trading fees", "url": "https://docs.polymarket.com/trading/fees", "note": "Taker fee formula and category rates." }, { "label": "Polymarket Data API — wallet activity", "url": "https://data-api.polymarket.com/activity", "note": "Used to calibrate the first-seen dates: a stratified sample of 500 wallets was checked against the earliest activity record the venue holds, and 500 of 500 resolved." }, { "label": "Vultax: Polymarket prices tested against 6,776 resolved markets", "url": "https://vultax.com/research/prediction-market-fair-value-calibration", "note": "The favourite-longshot effect measured from the price side rather than the wallet side" }, { "label": "Vultax: 1.6% of Polymarket wallets never sleep", "url": "https://vultax.com/research/polymarket-wallets-that-never-sleep-trading-cadence", "note": "The wallet population these flagged wallets sit inside, measured by cadence" }, { "label": "Vultax: where Polymarket profits go", "url": "https://vultax.com/research/best-polymarket-traders-leaderboards", "note": "Realised profit and loss per wallet, and how little of it persists" }, { "label": "Vultax methodology", "url": "https://vultax.com/methodology", "note": "How Vultax measures, and what it does not claim" }, { "label": "Polymarket activity API documentation", "url": "https://docs.polymarket.com/api-reference/core/get-user-activity", "note": "Oldest public trade per wallet; read 19 September 2026." }, { "label": "Vultax wallet-age check, 500 wallets", "url": "https://vultax.com/datasets/polymarket-wallet-first-seen-history-audit/wallet-age-audit.csv", "note": "First recorded fill against oldest public trade; addresses replaced by sample numbers." }, { "label": "CFTC — release 9217-26: insider-trading charges over the operation to capture Nicolás Maduro (23 Apr 2026)", "url": "https://www.cftc.gov/PressRoom/PressReleases/9217-26", "note": "Civil complaint alleging trading on Polymarket with classified information by a US service member; a parallel criminal case is pending. Allegations." }, { "label": "CFTC — release 9237-26: insider-trading charges over Google's Year in Search (27 May 2026)", "url": "https://www.cftc.gov/PressRoom/PressReleases/9237-26", "note": "Civil complaint alleging trading on Polymarket with confidential Google information; a parallel criminal case is pending. Allegations." }, { "label": "CoinDesk — Suspected insiders make over $1.2 million on Polymarket ahead of U.S. strike on Iran (28 Feb 2026)", "url": "https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2026/02/28/suspected-insiders-make-over-usd1-2-million-on-polymarket-ahead-of-u-s-strike-on-iran", "note": "Press report of the episode behind the 23-bet winning cluster" }, { "label": "CoinDesk — Polymarket bettors appear to have insider traded on a market designed to catch insider traders (27 Feb 2026)", "url": "https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2026/02/27/polymarket-bettors-appear-to-have-insider-traded-on-a-market-designed-to-catch-insider-traders", "note": "Press report of the episode behind the 19-bet winning cluster" }, { "label": "Polymarket public profile API documentation", "url": "https://docs.polymarket.com/api-reference/profiles/get-public-profile-by-wallet-address", "note": "createdAt is documented as profile creation; used to confirm the age of every tight bet's wallet." }, { "label": "Vultax: Prediction market lawsuit tracker", "url": "https://vultax.com/research/prediction-market-lawsuit-tracker", "note": "Both charged cases, with the other court cases over event contracts" } ], "measurement": { "kind": "observed", "temporalCoverage": "2025-01-01/2026-04-28", "population": "113,863 qualifying long-shot bets in settled Polymarket markets, 1,331 of them in the tight group", "methodology": "Rules and tests fixed in a protocol at 20:45 UTC on 27 September 2026, before any outcome was read. Win rate minus average price per group; matched gaps within category, price, time-to-outcome and half-year strata; intervals from 2,000 resamples of whole markets." }, "id": "tight-screen-table", "kind": "published-table", "description": "The long-shot screen tested on historical Polymarket fills, with a correction to the tight screen: 1,316 bets and a matched gap of −5.40 cents per share. Earlier sensitivity tables are retained as historical results.", "articleUrl": "https://vultax.com/research/polymarket-longshot-insider-screen-base-rate", "sectionUrl": "https://vultax.com/research/polymarket-longshot-insider-screen-base-rate#tight-screen", "publishedAt": "2026-09-21", "modifiedAt": "2026-10-08", "version": "7b5bd9e1038591b1b4b92c463f017a226d633783ca0d682cc0f5ede282e85eee", "isLive": false, "limitations": "Published research snapshots and calculations; these exports do not contain current quotes or live account data. Observation windows and populations are stated in the source captions and methodology. Missing metadata is unknown, not zero. Figures describe Polymarket fills between 1 January 2025 and 28 April 2026 in markets that had settled by the end of that window. A screen is a filter on public trading records, not a finding about any person, and no wallet it selects is accused of anything here. Not a recommendation to trade, and not financial advice.", "downloads": { "json": "https://vultax.com/research/polymarket-longshot-insider-screen-base-rate/data.json?dataset=tight-screen-table", "csv": "https://vultax.com/research/polymarket-longshot-insider-screen-base-rate/data.csv?dataset=tight-screen-table" } } ] }