CrowdIntelDefinition
What is Polymarket insider?
A Polymarket trader who bets with non-public information or against the consensus and wins at rates statistical models cannot explain by skill alone.
In detail
A Polymarket insider is a wallet whose resolved-bet win rate and PnL distribution diverge from what chance and skill predict for that category of market. The label combines quantitative signals — bet size, odds extremity at entry, timing relative to news, funding trail, and cluster membership — with statistical tests like binomial p-value. It does not imply a specific person or legal claim; it flags statistical anomalies worth investigating.
How CrowdIntel measures it
CrowdIntel scores every on-chain Polymarket trade across 8 signal categories (bet size, odds extremity, funding cluster, timing cluster, wallet win rate, bet concentration, market category, cluster reputation). Trades scoring ≥65 are surfaced as insider candidates; investigations are opened when a wallet clears statistical thresholds (≥20 bets, ≥70% win rate, p-value ≤0.1) against expected performance.
Frequently asked
How is a Polymarket insider different from a whale?
A whale is defined by trade size — moving large USDC volume per bet. An insider is defined by win rate and statistical edge relative to the category. Most insiders are small-to-medium whales; most whales are not insiders.
Is insider trading illegal on Polymarket?
Polymarket is an on-chain prediction market; rules vary by jurisdiction. CrowdIntel flags statistical anomalies, not legal violations. Detection enables transparency for other traders, not enforcement.
How reliable are Polymarket insider labels?
Reliability rises with sample size. A wallet with 15 resolved bets at 90% is weak evidence. CrowdIntel requires ≥20 resolved bets, ≥70% win rate, positive PnL, and p-value ≤0.1 before opening an investigation; Bayesian confidence is displayed alongside raw win rate to reduce small-sample bias.
Related terms
- Polymarket whale
A Polymarket wallet that trades significantly larger positions than the median user — typically $5,000+ per bet or $100,000+ lifetime volume.
- Funding cluster
A group of Polymarket wallets that received their initial USDC from the same source address and often coordinate trades — a signature of Sybil behavior or organized insider activity.
- Bayesian win rate
A shrinkage estimate of a wallet's true win rate that combines raw wins-over-bets with a prior — preventing a wallet with 9 wins out of 10 bets from being treated as a 90% sharpshooter.
- P-value (trading)
The probability that an observed win rate could occur by chance alone if the trader had no edge — used to separate genuine skill from lucky streaks.
- Smart money (Polymarket)
Wallets with proven track records of winning more than random chance — used as a leading indicator of where prices will move on Polymarket.