Variance Lover

I’ve been one of the biggest market makers on Polymarket for a long time. At peak I was doing $10M+ daily volume and paying thousands in fees every single day. The current state is the worst the platform has ever felt. Ghost fills still everywhere. Markets constantly breaking. Payouts randomly missing. Exploits going on for months while the team says “it’s fixed”. You spend more time defending against bugs than actually trading. Meanwhile, communication is a joke. They say “we’re listening” → ignore emails, ignore DMs. They say “we’ll work with top users” → instead it’s random private Telegram groups with whoever shouts the loudest. They say “issue fixed” → it clearly isn’t. At some point you stop believing anything they say. The fee situation is another one. If you’re generating serious volume and paying serious fees (thousands a day), most exchanges shower you with attention and perks. I'm not asking for that but would be nice to at least be acknowledged that you exist and have basic communication, especially after they've announced publicly multiple times that they will start doing this. Instead we got a week-long hype campaign for a “big update” that turned out to be… a hidden fee increase. How dumb do you think your users are? And then stuff like April 5th, missed referral/rebate payments, no announcement, no explanation, nothing. Just silence. That’s not a bug, that’s trust damage. The bigger issue is it feels like nobody on the team has actual trading experience. The design decisions show it. Every update introduces new edge cases, new exploits, new ways to break the order book. People have made many millions exploiting this stuff. Many of these accounts are obvious, trackable, preventable. The community has been pointing it out for months. Ignored. Only now that the markets are borderline unusable does it seem like there’s urgency. Right now the platform is honestly close to untradeable: – ghost fills – manipulation – unreliable payouts – constant bugs – zero transparency And surprise, volume is dropping. Meanwhile Kalshi is catching up fast (have basically overtaken in volume in almost every category except for politics) and Hyperliquid is entering with a team that actually understands trading systems. I want Polymarket to succeed. And yes, maybe the upcoming ghost fill fix helps. But if this pattern continues, terrible communication, fake timelines, ignoring core users, then this won’t be a place serious traders stick around. You can’t build a market while eroding the trust of the people who provide the liquidity, especially not as a many multi billion dollar company! I have spoken to many large polymarket whales (of which a considerable amount have already given up on the platform) and they all share this sentiment. @Polymarket @mustafap0ly @SuhailKakar @_kanarazu_

@nahnah64 Sent you a DM

@variance_lover Would be happy to onboard you to Hyperliquid if you’d like to bring your market making over here. Have done this for many over the last few days 🫡

I’ve been one of the biggest market makers on Polymarket for a long time. At peak I was doing $10M+ daily volume and paying thousands in fees every single day. The current state is the worst the platform has ever felt. Ghost fills still everywhere. Markets constantly breaking. Payouts randomly missing. Exploits going on for months while the team says “it’s fixed”. You spend more time defending against bugs than actually trading. Meanwhile, communication is a joke. They say “we’re listening” → ignore emails, ignore DMs. They say “we’ll work with top users” → instead it’s random private Telegram groups with whoever shouts the loudest. They say “issue fixed” → it clearly isn’t. At some point you stop believing anything they say. The fee situation is another one. If you’re generating serious volume and paying serious fees (thousands a day), most exchanges shower you with attention and perks. I'm not asking for that but would be nice to at least be acknowledged that you exist and have basic communication, especially after they've announced publicly multiple times that they will start doing this. Instead we got a week-long hype campaign for a “big update” that turned out to be… a hidden fee increase. How dumb do you think your users are? And then stuff like April 5th, missed referral/rebate payments, no announcement, no explanation, nothing. Just silence. That’s not a bug, that’s trust damage. The bigger issue is it feels like nobody on the team has actual trading experience. The design decisions show it. Every update introduces new edge cases, new exploits, new ways to break the order book. People have made many millions exploiting this stuff. Many of these accounts are obvious, trackable, preventable. The community has been pointing it out for months. Ignored. Only now that the markets are borderline unusable does it seem like there’s urgency. Right now the platform is honestly close to untradeable: – ghost fills – manipulation – unreliable payouts – constant bugs – zero transparency And surprise, volume is dropping. Meanwhile Kalshi is catching up fast (have basically overtaken in volume in almost every category except for politics) and Hyperliquid is entering with a team that actually understands trading systems. I want Polymarket to succeed. And yes, maybe the upcoming ghost fill fix helps. But if this pattern continues, terrible communication, fake timelines, ignoring core users, then this won’t be a place serious traders stick around. You can’t build a market while eroding the trust of the people who provide the liquidity, especially not as a many multi billion dollar company! I have spoken to many large polymarket whales (of which a considerable amount have already given up on the platform) and they all share this sentiment. @Polymarket @mustafap0ly @SuhailKakar @_kanarazu_

@TycoonPal Hope you are right!

@variance_lover on the timeline i think there is a lot that points to it actually being closer than most of us would think x.com/xbtRen/status/…

@victorleewyatt Any serious market maker will be making and taking. Very few strategies involve purely maker trades.

@variance_lover Valid observations… except… Market makers don’t pay fees…

@icobeast Sent you a DM

@variance_lover Would be happy to onboard you to Kalshi if you’d like to bring your market making over here. Have done this for many over the last few months 🫡

@TycoonPal Really hope they will but somewhat doubt it will happen anytime soon. I think it is a strong motivator to keep people hooked to the platform for the future promise of an eventual $poly drop which would go away once they drop it.

@variance_lover do you expect them to drop $poly?

@kakujain Thanks for the reply! I've tried contacting contacting via DM/Discord before without much success. I just sent you a DM.

Hi @variance_lover, I’m really sorry your experience has been this frustrating , especially as one of our longest-standing and highest-volume market makers. We hear you loud and clear on the ghost fills, reliability issues, payouts, exploits, and communication gaps. We’ve brought in new leadership (@devjoshstevens ) and a dedicated product team (@0xdanzu @mustafap0ly) over the past few weeks and we’re moving fast to fix these. The rapid growth (and resulting scaling challenges) doesn’t excuse the problems you’ve faced, and we’re working around the clock to deliver the experience you and other serious traders deserve ,including much better direct feedback channels. You can DM me or any of the team mentioned here (or reach out in Discord) anytime. Appreciate you sticking with us and sharing this feedback directly. We’re committed to earning back your trust.

It's a multi billion dollar company that has existed for years already. Agreed, that bugs are normal and expected but the severity of some of them and ignorance towards them is not acceptable imo. Some like ghost fills and similar exploits have literally cost normal users millions. x.com/variance_lover…

@variance_lover polymarket has moved to its own infrastructure, so bugs are normal at first the main thing is to highlight these bugs so they get fixed faster

This trader made +$263,000 in one day on 5-minute markets! Account: @trade-via-gravia?r=mecooloff#A4ZARG4" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">polymarket.com/@trade-via-gra… Only 180 trades! But accounts like this are fake! Here’s why: > he splits $4,000 (buys Up and Down at 50¢, $2,000 each) > the winning side (100¢) = +$2,000 > the losing side (0¢) = -$2,000 In reality, no profit, no loss. But Polymarket incorrectly counts only the winning side in history. So the account’s PnL appears to grow with every trade. This creates a false impression that the trader is profitable. This account puts a link to its service (likely a scam) in its bio. People click it and lose money. There are also issues on Polymarket right now with displaying all closed losing trades. Losing trades may only show in the Active section if not yet closed. Be careful and don’t click such bio links - it could be either cheap promotion for some service or a scam.

@Doonhamer_ @Polymarket Yeah big volume players have turned off and volumes have dropped a bunch x.com/variance_lover…

Since the explosion of ghost fill exploits, @Polymarket fees have continued to reduce for almost every day in the last week. Illustrating that a lot of users are currently not trading until it is fixed. Really hope the patch tomorrow solves it.

@ikarusz26 Polymarket has the exact same problem. It's easy to manipulate the chainlink oracle as well and it is happening constantly.

First HIP-4 market resolved as “No” after BTC on Hyperliquid wicked $20 lower than Chainlink’s oracle price right at the last minute. If only someone had warned them this would happen. Oh wait.. Polymarket.

@ikarusz26 @Polymarket @shayne_coplan @devjoshstevens @mustafap0ly Yeah, have seen many huge players leave the platform in the last month. x.com/variance_lover…

-> @Polymarket is literally unusable and predatory atm (Throwing more LP rewards won't fix this). 1) fix ghost orders asap 2) launch in the US 3) launch L2 4) tge poly and replace uma you're literally trying to fail by succeeding! @shayne_coplan @devjoshstevens @mustafap0ly

@ikarusz26 Main issues are ghost fills and exploiters taking away all the money x.com/variance_lover…

I’ve been a Polymarket user since 2023 and never felt this frustrated trading on the platform. The UX has gone from just buggy to borderline predatory. Market orders not getting filled even when the portfolio shows they did, while ghost limit orders milking all the LP rewards.

@ikarusz26 Nope, it's just underlying manipulation, one of the many issues plaguing polymarket's 5m markets

Interesting to see so many inefficiencies on Polymarket’s 5m markets lately. Normally when price is at the target, odds are 50/50. But I’ve noticed it sometimes skews 65/35 one way even when price is right at the target. Maybe MMs are sitting out until the fix on Monday?

@Eltonma Couldn't agree more. The platform has become close to unusable which is just pushing big players away. Talking about similar issues here: x.com/variance_lover…

I have been playing on polymarket for almost 2 years. Today is the day I feel most angry about polymarket team. The ghost fill problem is getting much worse and those bastards are doing 50k resting orders both sides. I am getting 3% rewards on markets I suppose to get 50+%. The team said they would ban all those accounts but I think they are doing some lousy job. It is very easy to ban them. Just track big accounts like me or domah etc, check their backend you see failed transactions then you know which accounts are at fault. Check their ip and linked accounts and ban them all. It is easy. I was doing Amazon 20 years ago, Jeff Bezos know how to ban those Chinese cheaters. I don’t get it why poly is not doing things. The whole order book look like shit now. For 2 years I never requests anything from polymarket but I just think the did too bad this time the whole upgrade was not planned well. And as the #1 lp farmer by far. I suggest that poly should kinda compensate all lp farmer that are still doing lp after the upgrade till Monday’s permanent fix is deployed. (And I kinda skeptical if that upgrade really works) At least pay them a few times more based on their pro rata share of the rewards earned. And perhaps give me one polymarket necklace that identical to Paul Logan’s that sold to Pawn Star Rick’s at $30k (well this part is a joke but maybe Shayne should really consider it) This is so bad that even I as a lp farmer that keeps on farming for 650+ days thinking about quit farming. And it seems to me that if those bastards made like 100k accounts before Monday they might still can keep on doing that? I really hope the team can seriously address this issue. @shayne_coplan @_kanarazu_ @Polymarket @mustafap0ly