Polymarket Airdrop Farmers Have Become ‘More Sophisticated’ as Token Launch Looms

Customers making an attempt to farm a possible Polymarket airdrop have upped their operations in an try to make it more durable for the prediction market to exclude them. It follows current Decrypt reporting that Polymarket plans to launch a crypto token as soon as it has regained a foothold in the US—probably in 2026.

Final 12 months, as many customers anticipated {that a} token launch would observe the U.S. election, farmers purchased and offered massive positions to artificially inflate their quantity. They did so in an effort to place themselves for a bigger allocation of a future token airdrop, which are sometimes designed to reward a crypto protocol’s most energetic and fervent customers.

This methodology was extraordinarily straightforward to identify and annoying for regular customers, because it clogged the exercise feed—a lot in order that pseudonymous Polymarket whale Fhantom Bets stated he’d personally report them.

Now, each Fhantom Bets and notable Polymarket consumer CSP Buying and selling advised Decrypt they imagine farmers could have gotten “extra refined” of their efforts, as that earlier sample has largely disappeared.

“Earlier than, it was fairly apparent. They’d do enormous $50,000 block buys towards themselves—that was fairly clearly unsophisticated wash buying and selling,” CSPTrading advised Decrypt. “I don’t actually see that for the sports activities markets that I’m market making; that’s the one purpose I believe they’ve gotten ‘extra refined,’ or given up.”

Fhantom Bets agreed that airdrop farming on Polymarket seems much less rampant than it was final 12 months, however is for certain that individuals are nonetheless doing it. Beforehand, he stated, wash merchants have been simply noticed as they usually purchased and offered shares of markets between two accounts.

Now, he speculates, wash merchants are doing so with over 100 wallets to forestall this from being an outlier statistic. Fhantom Bets is now engaged on a undertaking to determine these wash merchants.



A pseudonymous dealer often known as Shady advised Decrypt that they’re farming the airdrop, however their methodology for doing so doesn’t require wash buying and selling. As an alternative, they’ve recognized 4 standards they imagine shall be thought of for the airdrop: quantity, revenue, offering liquidity, and the variety of markets a consumer trades. 

“I believe [the airdrop] is prone to be tiered or observe a logarithmic curve, as a ton of the amount and liquidity rewards are finished by such a small proportion of their customers,” Shady advised Decrypt. “There are some customers and bots that can commerce eight figures in quantity monthly, whereas the common consumer might be not even doing six figures in quantity. In the event that they rewarded folks linearly primarily based on quantity, it will create a distribution closely skewed in direction of the highest.”

In consequence, Shady has merely used the prediction market in a approach that optimizes his publicity to those potential standards.

CSP Buying and selling advised Decrypt he’s effective if a consumer like that is rewarded in an airdrop. Fhantom Bets jokingly stated he would hate to see anybody earn money apart from himself and his pals.

Predictors on Myriad now imagine there’s a lower than 15% probability {that a} Polymarket token shall be introduced this 12 months, down from 16.4% per week in the past. Sources advised Decrypt that even when it have been introduced this 12 months, it’s probably that the token gained’t be launched till subsequent 12 months because the platform appears to re-enter the U.S. market—after it was successfully banned in 2022.

(Disclosure: Myriad is developed by Decrypt’s mother or father firm, DASTAN.)