How to find insiders on Polymarket

A Polymarket insider is a wallet whose resolved-bet performance diverges from what chance and skill predict for that category of market. This guide walks through the exact workflow CrowdIntel uses to find them.

The research question

"Is there a wallet on this market whose past performance suggests it knows something the crowd doesn't?"

Three filters answer that:

1. Sample size — has this wallet bet enough resolved markets that we can trust the number?
2. Excess win rate — does the wallet beat the category's base rate by enough to reject luck?
3. Category fit — does the wallet's track record match the kind of market we're looking at?

Step 1 — Start from the market, not the wallet

If you're thinking about trading a specific market, start there. Open its page (e.g. /markets/will-x-happen-by-y). Look at the top-holders list.

Things to scan for:

• Single holders with outsized positions — one wallet with 10x the next holder's size is interesting. Either they know something or they're wrong by an order of magnitude.
• Multiple wallets that look similar — three wallets on the same side with similar sizing and similar age often turn out to be one operator.

Click any top holder to open their dossier.

Step 2 — Check the lifetime track record

On the wallet dossier, the first thing to read is the headline: resolved bets, win rate, and PnL.

Heuristics:

• < 10 resolved bets — this is noise. Don't draw any conclusion yet. CrowdIntel's confidence pill will show grey. Skip to another wallet.
• 10–50 resolved bets at 70%+ and positive PnL — worth a deeper look. Go to step 3.
• 50+ resolved bets at 65%+ and positive PnL — strong candidate. The shrinkage estimator now trusts the raw win rate.
• High raw win rate but negative PnL — not an insider. This is someone betting heavy favorites who wins often but loses on expected value. Scope edge explains this in detail.

Step 3 — Look at category edges

Scroll down to the category breakdown on the dossier. A wallet with 65% overall is mediocre. A wallet with 85% in Middle East conflict markets over 40 resolved bets and 50% elsewhere is very, very interesting.

The heuristic: real insiders have information in one narrow domain. A generic sharp has edge across markets; an insider has edge in their specific information lane. If a wallet's edge is concentrated in the category of the market you're researching, that's the strongest signal you can get without running a full investigation.

See scope edge in the glossary for the formal definition.

Step 4 — Check for cluster membership

Back on the dossier, look for a cluster badge in the header or the "Featured insider" ribbon. If the wallet is part of a published investigation, the case is already written and you can read it directly.

If no badge — run the funding check yourself:

1. Copy the wallet's funding-trail link on the dossier, or click through to Polygonscan.
2. Look at who funded the wallet originally (first USDC-in transaction).
3. Check that funder's transaction list on Polygonscan. If it also funded other wallets that are now betting the same market, you've found a likely cluster that CrowdIntel hasn't yet opened an investigation for. Email us with the wallets — we'll run it through the detection stack.

Step 5 — Verify against the market context

Before trading on a candidate you've found, sanity-check:

• Did the wallet place its position before or after public news broke? If before, insider signal strengthens. If after, it's just a sharp trader reacting faster than the market.
• Is the position size consistent with the wallet's history? A wallet that normally bets $1K suddenly putting $250K on one market is suspicious at any level of past edge.
• Are there obvious counter-positions? If an equally credible wallet is on the other side, the signal weakens — two insiders disagreeing means the information isn't as certain as it looks.

Step 6 — Ship your note

If you're going to trade on this research, write down your thesis before you click buy. Link to the wallet dossier and the market page. You'll want this paper trail whether you win or lose — it's how you learn what worked.

Common mistakes

• Anchoring on raw win rate alone — a 90% wallet with 8 resolved bets is nothing. Use shrinkage-adjusted rate or wait for more data.
• Ignoring PnL sign — 85% WR with negative PnL is a heavy-favorite bettor, not an insider.
• Confusing whales with insiders — size doesn't equal information. A whale who bets $1M and loses $500K isn't an insider.
• Cherry-picking the category — if you find a wallet with 90% on one narrow topic, make sure they have 10+ resolved bets in that narrow topic, not 90% overall across everything.

Tools on this page

• /whales — ranked wallet index
• /investigations — published cases
• /insider-radar — real-time flagged trades
• /glossary/scope-edge — formal definition of scope edge
• /methodology — the public overview of our detection stack

Frequently asked

How do I know the wallet isn't just lucky?

Shrinkage-adjusted win rate plus sample size. A wallet with 65% over 200 resolved bets has a shrinkage estimate very close to 65% and a p-value against chance that's small enough to take seriously. Use CrowdIntel's confidence pill as a quick check.

What if the wallet has high WR but low volume?

Lower priority. High-WR low-volume wallets might be insiders keeping their footprint small, or they might be careful hobbyists. Without volume, you can't size a copy-trade off them anyway.

Can I ask CrowdIntel to investigate a specific wallet?

Yes — email security@crowdintel.xyz with the address and your reasoning. If it clears our threshold, we'll open a formal investigation.