Author: Jonah
Compiled by: Jiahua, ChainCatcher
I have been holding onto this article for a while.
I always wanted to write it, but kept holding back, hoping things would quietly self-correct. Until this morning, when Bloomberg released an article titled "Polymarket Loses Its Lead in the Prediction Market Due to Delays and Backlash," to be honest, this report has already conveyed most of what I wanted to say. So I will quote it extensively to ease some of the burden.
Polymarket is facing more and more operational setbacks in its attempt to reach its key audience (American customers) and has now fallen behind its main competitors. From bloomberg.com
This title is very painful. It should be that way.
Since mid-2024, I have been observing Polymarket. I agree with its vision, defending the platform during every regulatory panic, recommending it to every trader I know. Prediction markets are one of the most important financial infrastructures of this decade, and Polymarket is the company I have always hoped would win in this field.
So this is not an attack article. It is the kind of letter you write about something you genuinely care about.
Shayne Coplan, and the entire team, we need to talk.
The current situation is brutal
Let's start with the data.
It is reported that Kalshi is valued at about $22 billion, while Polymarket's negotiation valuation is about $15 billion. This is a gap of about $7 billion for a competitor that Polymarket once left far behind. Trading volume from the beginning of the year to now: Kalshi around $37 billion, Polymarket around $29 billion. Market share in the U.S.: Kalshi close to 90%, while Polymarket remains stuck behind the waiting list.
A year ago, the mainstream narrative was still "Polymarket is the dominant player in the prediction market, Kalshi is the regulated stepchild." Today, the narrative has completely reversed. Kalshi has become a compliant, quick-delivery option with institutional credibility, while Polymarket has become the crypto-native old player that keeps tripping over itself.
This lead was something we had comfortably in hand. Now, we are letting it slip away.
The platform itself is not yet operating normally
This needs to be said directly: the core product has real issues, yet the company behaves as if nothing is wrong.
Last weekend, Polymarket postponed the migration of CLOB V2, the new pUSD collateral token, and the rebuilt matching engine by at least a week. To be fair, the delay itself was the right decision. The developer community has been voicing for weeks that there simply isn't enough time for a clean migration integration. Pushing a half-finished product live would have worse consequences than a delay.
So a delay is fine; in fact, a delay is a good thing.
What is embarrassing is the announcement of the way it was made.
According to what has circulated in the community: the news of the delay was first posted on Twitter, even before the original official migration announcement that included the migration guide was released. The migration guide that followed quoted outdated dates. Then another correction was added on top of the first correction.
Structurally, this is exactly the kind of communication chaos that a "well-organized operational machine" should not produce.
Then on Monday, a restart that was supposed to last five minutes took over an hour. The exchange was actually offline during peak business hours. Just another small issue stacking on top of the problems.
As reported by Bloomberg quoting a Polymarket spokesperson: you cannot "build the most interesting consumer financial product of the past few years without becoming a well-organized operational machine." This statement is true; that is the vision. But the reality is that this machine keeps failing on small issues that could have been avoided, and these small issues are accumulating into a pattern.
Moreover, these are not isolated events:
- Adjustments to fees in sports and crypto markets appear reactive and lack communication
- The team had announced the migration for months, yet there were repeated delays in infrastructure
- Scheduled maintenance windows repeatedly exceeded the declared duration
- The U.S. app has been stagnant in a "mobile only, sports only, invite only" testing phase for months, with reportedly millions still on the waiting list
"Crypto-native" should mean more transparency, resilience, and responsibility than traditional platforms, not a shield for poor UX and unreliable infrastructure.
The community has patience, but patience is clearly not unlimited. Every downtime, every delay, every vague status update is pushing marginal users toward the competitor that can "just operate normally."
The order of priorities is wrong
What really broke me yesterday was this event.
The platform is objectively not operating at 100%. The exchange upgrade has been delayed. The U.S. application has not fully opened. A million people are lying on the waiting list. Traders from the global product were still experiencing downtime on Monday afternoon.
Then yesterday, Polymarket announced the launch of perpetual contracts.
We price for the future. Now you can leverage it. Perpetual contracts are coming to Polymarket. Register for early access.
Perpetual contracts are a great product and should absolutely be included in the roadmap long-term. But announcing it now, or even just disclosing it—just days after the infrastructure upgrade was postponed and a restart heavily lapsed, while the U.S. application is still in testing—is only conveying one message to most community members: cash grab.
Perpetual contracts are the highest fee, highest leverage, and highest volume product in the crypto space, representing the fastest path to extract income from existing users. Announcing them while the core exchange is still unstable and a million Americans are still locked out clearly indicates the team’s true priorities: monetize existing traders first, worry about the platform later, and forget about the locked-out users.
Whether intentional or not, this is the signal being sent. Revenue coverage takes precedence over product stability. Producing new fee-generating products takes precedence over perfecting already launched products. Harvesting income from current users is prioritized over fixing the experience for everyone—both existing and waiting.
To be honest, interpreting this as a "cash grab" might already be considered polite.
Look at this order. Kalshi has announced its crypto perpetual contract product "Timeless": a specific date, a specific venue, and an official release—April 27th in New York, a complete product, delivering in a week.
Breaking: The first CFTC-regulated prediction market exchange in the U.S. @Kalshi has chosen Pyth Pro as its exclusive data layer for its commodity markets. Gold, silver, oil, natural gas, copper, corn, soybeans, wheat. This is why it matters.
Within days, Polymarket's response was... a registration page for early access. No release date, no venue, no product specifications, and no actual product. Just a marketing tweet, a slogan "We price for the future, now you can leverage it," and a form to collect accounts.
That was not a product release; it was a press release in the guise of an announcement. When what you present in response to a competitor is clearly content-empty, you are no longer setting the pace of this field—you are chasing someone else’s pace. And you have to wait in line?
This is a track defined by Polymarket itself. Polymarket was once a pioneer, a cultural phenomenon, a reigning champion with a years-long first-mover advantage. And today, on the issue of launching derivatives, Polymarket has become the one playing catch-up, using a registration form as public relations material, simply because Kalshi announced first.
This is the most embarrassing line in the entire letter, but it is also the crux of what Bloomberg's report is really saying.
The order of operations should be very simple:
- U.S. application. Fully open, lift the waiting list, run stably, and complete functionality. This is the biggest lever that Polymarket has, yet it has been shut for months, letting Kalshi gnaw at the U.S. retail market. This must be the top priority. Not second, but first.
- Core platform reliability. Complete the CLOB V2 migration, elegantly complete the pUSD transition, don’t miss maintenance windows, and make the exchange something traders can "set it and forget it."
- Then, only after this, expand the business scope. Perpetual contracts, new market categories, and other things on the whiteboard.
The current order is reversed; the community sees it clearly.
The entrepreneurial phase is over
Bloomberg's article has laid bare what the community has been discussing for months: delays, distractions, and a culture that still resembles a wild startup from 2021—despite Polymarket now sitting on billions of dollars in open contracts, a major partnership with ICE, and the acquisition of CFTC-designated trading qualifications through QCEX, as well as a collaboration with MLB.
That wild startup era is over; it must end.
You are no longer facing a forum or niche crypto application. You are facing a competitor with a CFTC license, institutional endorsement, and New York roots, delivering products on time and being taken seriously by regulators, trading partners, and the media.
This is a maturation period that every high-profile financial company ultimately must endure. Coinbase went through it, Stripe went through it, and every serious trading venue must ultimately stop operating like a "group chat" and start becoming—borrowing the spokesperson's words—a well-organized operational machine.
Specifically, this means bringing in truly mature professionals in operations, risk control, and public relations. It means cutting off distractions that do not serve U.S. promotions and core stability. It means over-communicating when issues arise, presenting real reviews and true accountability, rather than just a few brief status updates followed by silence.
None of this is hostile. It’s what every serious financial venue ultimately must do. Polymarket is now one of them. Present the way you should be.
Why I still have faith in Polymarket
That said, here is why I haven’t left this platform, and why I don’t think this game is over.
ICE is on your side. Jeffrey Sprecher will not write a check for an empty project. The parent company of the New York Stock Exchange, Intercontinental Exchange, led a round last fall, a signal the market has not fully priced in yet. You now have direct access to one of the world’s most mature market infrastructure operators. Make good use of it.
The MLB partnership is a ceiling-level boost. This signal indicates that the endgame here is not "just another betting app," but making prediction markets a mainstream, embedded financial infrastructure in institutional systems. Sports leagues, TV networks, and traditional financial tracks are all merging into the same order book; this is epoch-making. Kalshi clearly doesn’t have this cultural reach.
The brand is iconic. In any case, in public perception, Polymarket is nearly synonymous with prediction markets. The election cycle has solidified this point, with the platform being repeatedly cited by journalists, hedge funds, and meme creators. This is a moat that most companies could not even dream of.
The community is still here. Those who appeared in the early markets, scaled up during the 2024 election, and supported the platform through all its growing pains have not left. We want to win, and we also want to see you win. That is why we are writing this kind of letter now, and not quietly moving trading volumes to another platform.
Bring home the victory
To be honest: Kalshi is winning this quarter, and possibly this entire year.
But Polymarket can still win this decade. The brand, partnerships, community, regulatory side obtained through QCEX, and relationships with ICE are all still here; nothing has been lost. They just haven’t been fully utilized while the team pushes the wrong things in the wrong order.
So the ask is simple.
Fix the platform. Launch the U.S. application. Don’t announce new products until the old ones stabilize. Truly become the well-organized operational machine that the spokesperson talks about.
The community still stands with you, and the believers are still here. But the window to close the gap is narrower than it was six months ago, and it will be even narrower in another six months.
First, fix the platform. Then, bring home the victory.
Written by a longtime Polymarket user, who more than anyone hopes to never have to write such a letter again.
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