Only 3% of traders drive Polymarket's accuracy, not the crowd, study finds

TLDR

• A London Business School and Yale study found just 3% of Polymarket accounts drove most price discovery across 1.72 million accounts and $13.76 billion in volume from 2023 to 2025.

Key Facts

• Researchers analyzed every Polymarket trade from 2023 to 2025, covering 1.72 million accounts and $13.76 billion in trading volume.
• The top 3% of traders consistently moved prices toward correct outcomes; the remaining 97% provided liquidity but lost money in aggregate to the informed minority.
• To separate skill from luck, authors ran each trader’s bets 10,000 times with randomized direction; only 12% of the biggest raw-profit winners beat that benchmark.
• In the days before the U.S. removal of Maduro, three new Polymarket accounts made large bets when odds sat at ~10%; they collectively earned over $630,000 and mostly stopped trading after.

Why It Matters

• The findings directly challenge prediction markets’ core claim that accuracy derives from broad crowd participation rather than a concentrated informed minority.
• The Maduro case illustrates how the same edge that improves price discovery becomes a concrete insider-trading risk when information is non-public.

Sam Reynolds / CoinDesk · 2026-04-26 · Read the original