1. It suddenly started charging money, but you probably didn't even notice.
You may have seen pages like this:
- "Probability of Trump winning the 2024 election: 51.3%"
- "Probability of a Fed rate cut in March: 68.7%"
- "LPL Spring Split Finals, BLG's odds of winning: 1.39"
This is not a gambling website, nor is it media commentary; rather, it is a unique entity in the Web3 world—the prediction market.
Simply put, it's a mechanism where you "vote" with real money: if you believe something will happen, you buy a "yes" contract; if you believe it won't happen, you buy a "no" contract. Prices fluctuate in real time, and the final number represents the "collective judgment" cast by thousands of people with their money.
Polymarket is currently the world's most popular, most actively traded, and most cited on-chain prediction platform. It allows users to trade directly with the USDC stablecoin by providing a clean webpage.
On January 6, 2026, it quietly updated its official website, adding a page called "Transaction Fees" to the documentation and announcing that, starting immediately, the "15-minute cryptocurrency price fluctuation" market will charge a transaction fee of up to 3%.
Upon hearing the news, many longtime users' first reaction was: "Huh? Wasn't it always free before? How did it survive before?"
This question hits a crucial, often overlooked truth in the Web3 world: a seemingly cool technological product can only survive on code and ideals.
Second, its sudden popularity stems from trending topics, but its fate is determined by regulation.
Polymarket has indeed been popular many times:
- During the 2022 Qatar World Cup, users bet on "Argentina to win," causing contract prices to skyrocket.
- During the 2023 LPL Spring Split, esports fans traded team wins and losses in real time on the platform.
- During the 2024 US presidential election, the peak daily transaction volume exceeded $2.7 billion, which was cited by The New York Times as a source.
But what truly determines whether it can continue operating is never these sensational events, but rather two words: regulation.
Founded in 2020, Polymarket quickly secured backing from prominent venture capital firms such as Peter Thiel's Founders Fund and planned a full-scale rollout across the United States. However, in January 2022, the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) issued an enforcement order that abruptly halted its operations.
The binary contracts it offers, such as "Who will win between Real Madrid and Barcelona?" and "Will the Federal Reserve cut interest rates?", fall under the category of regulated swap transactions and require a Designated Contract Market (DCM) or Swap Execution Facility (SEF) license—which it does not possess.
The result? Polymarket accepted a $1.4 million fine and shut down all compliance risk markets for US users. On the surface, it appears to be an exit, but in reality, it's a strategic contraction: relocating its operations out of the US, shifting payment channels to on-chain settlement, while maintaining global access to services—including US users.
Interestingly, withdrawing from the US market actually made it more "out of the loop".
During the 2024 election, it became an "unofficial dashboard" for global observers to track changes in public opinion; the media consulted it before writing articles, traders referenced it when modeling, and researchers also adjusted its API to analyze public sentiment.
The real turning point came in November 2025: the CFTC officially approved its DCM application. This meant that it was no longer an "innovative project skirting the rules," but had obtained a "formal license" from the US financial regulatory system.
This charge wasn't a spur-of-the-moment decision, but rather the first step after receiving the work badge.
Third, it was free for six years not because it didn't make money, but because it was waiting for an opportunity where it could "make money with peace of mind."
You might not know this: most prediction markets have long charged transaction fees—typically between 0.5% and 3%. But Polymarket, since its launch in 2020, has offered zero transaction fees to all users and all markets.
This has sparked a lot of speculation: Is it staying alive with venture capital? Is it selling data? Is it backed by powerful figures?
The answer is actually more pragmatic: it's betting on a window of time.
The value of market prediction lies not in how much profit is made from a single transaction, but in whether enough people participate frequently enough to form a true, stable, and credible price signal. And "zero transaction fees" are the most direct and effective way to attract users.
Over the course of six years, it successfully accomplished three things:
- In high-profile events such as politics, sports, and cryptography, it has become the de facto "default pricing center";
- Its price data has been repeatedly cited by Bloomberg terminals, academic papers, and hedge fund strategies, forming a de facto standard;
- The company has accumulated a complete probability dataset spanning multiple cycles, events, and regions over several years—a moat that no new platform can buy no matter how much money it spends.
In other words, it exchanged the money it should have collected for something more valuable: liquidity, influence, and data assets.
The charging on January 6, 2026, is a natural result of this long-term plan:
- It is only targeted at high-frequency, short-term markets that are susceptible to robot interference, such as "15-minute encrypted price fluctuations";
- Rates fluctuate dynamically: the closer the price is to 50% (the more difficult it is to judge), the higher the fee; the closer it is to 0% or 100% (the more certain it is), the lower the fee or even zero.
- All fees do not go into the platform's pocket, but are returned in full to the market maker (i.e., the person who provides buy and sell quotes) in USDC daily.
- The goal is very practical: to incentivize more people to place orders, narrow the bid-ask spread, and enable quick execution even during sharp drops or rises.
Some say it's to combat high-frequency order-brushing bots, others believe it's to filter out fake transactions, and still others point out that it's essentially a stress test: within regulatory limits, verifying whether the fee mechanism can improve market quality rather than harm user experience.
It hasn't become "commercial," it's just that it can finally "do business seriously."
IV. Small entry point, large potential; just starting out, already under pressure.
Don't underestimate the fee for "only one column".
According to data compiled by Gate Research, an on-chain data analytics firm, on the Dune platform:
- Within two weeks of launching the fee-based system, Polymarket had collected approximately $2.19 million in fees.
- At the current pace, the average weekly income is approximately $730,000, which translates to an annualized return of $38 million.
This is just one subcategory of "15-minute encrypted price fluctuations." Polymarket currently covers the following areas:
- US and Global Political Elections
- Top-tier sporting events such as the World Cup, NBA, and LPL.
- Macroeconomic events such as the Federal Reserve's interest rate decision and the release of CPI data.
- Long-term issues such as cryptocurrency, real estate, and AI technology advancements.
Profitability is far from being realized. But the other side of the coin is that compliance is never a one-time solution.
Obtaining a DCM license from the CFTC only means it has passed the federal-level "exam." However, the United States is a federal country, and each state has the right to formulate its own financial and gambling regulations. In mid-January 2026, the Tennessee sports betting regulator issued a cease and desist order to Polymarket and similar platform Kalshi, explicitly requiring:
“Immediately cease offering sports event contracts to residents of this state, or face civil damages and even criminal charges.”
Similar challenges exist globally:
- Japan's Financial Services Agency (FSA) has explicitly listed event contracts as a prohibited business activity;
- The UK's FCA requires a license, a high deposit, and strict anti-money laundering checks.
- All prediction markets within China are inaccessible and are explicitly prohibited by policy.
Therefore, Polymarket's next step is not rapid expansion, but continuous adaptation:
- Establish localized compliance entities in different judicial jurisdictions;
- Distinguish between the product design boundaries of "financial instruments" and "entertainment activities";
- Explore collaborations with traditional financial institutions to transform probability data into inputs for risk control models.
Can it become an evergreen in the Web3 world? The answer lies not in how advanced the technology is, but in whether it can find a sustainable middle ground among regulators, users, and businesses.
Prediction markets offer us a rare perspective: when the world is full of uncertainty, we can at least know how many people around the world are willing to bet real money on "this will happen".
This consensus may not be correct, but it is certainly true. Polymarket's new pricing model is not the end of the story, but rather the beginning of its true growth as a genuine service.
