Polymarket Volume and Users At New High With Election Markets Making Up 87%

Polymarket, the largest web3 prediction market, continues to host record volume and users amid the run-up to the 2024 U.S. presidential election.

Data from Dune Analytics shows Polymarket hosted record volume during August so far with $390.6 million, marking its fourth consecutive monthly all-time high. The number of active Polymarket traders is also at a new monthly high, with 53,981 users interacting with the platform this month.

Open interest also tagged a new high of $103.3 million on Aug. 22.

Markets for the 2024 U.S. presidential election dominate activity on the platform, accounting for 87.6% of volume over the past seven days. Election markets tagged a record high with 93.2% of Polymarket’s weekly volume in mid-July.

Despite most users punting on the election, the number of Polymarket users trading other markets posted a new weekly high of 19,135 over the past seven days, a 4,413% increase from 424 during the first week of May.

Polymarket’s non-election markets also hosted record weekly volume of $28.3 million in late-July, with the metric since pulling back to $17.8 million.

More than just gambling?

On Aug. 25, Vitalik Buterin, Ethereum’s chief scientist, praised prediction markets like Polymarket, pushing back against likening the platform to gambling.

Buterin described the markets as offering a “social epistemic tool” that allows the public to view and contribute to estimates regarding the likelihood of important events occurring, free from the editorial bias associated with social media and many news websites.

“Conditional prediction markets have applications in governance, which we’re starting to see already,” Buterin said.

However, not everyone is convinced.

Polymarket’s electoral betting markets have closely mirrored movements in mainstream betting markets, suggesting that market makers seeking arbitrage opportunities between Polymarket and gambling websites are guiding price action on the platform.

Further, the public odds produced by betting markets are largely informed by a combination of complex statistical modeling and the wagers of market participants, similarly producing outlooks for future events that are untethered to the editorial bias described by Buterin.