Data Modeling: How to Enhance the Quality of Interactions on Polymarket?

This article comes from: arise

Editing | Odaily Planet Daily (@OdailyChina) ; Translator | Azuma (@azuma_eth)

The core message of this article is simply — how to prepare for the potential largest airdrop in the prediction market sector.

Mandatory Data Clarifications

Before building any model, we need accurate, reliable data. Polymarket’s trading volume data has long been widely misreported.

In December 2025, Paradigm published a key research finding: most Polymarket dashboards calculate trading volume by summing all “OrderFilled” events, but this event triggers on both the order placement and the fill side of a trade, leading to double counting. The actual trading volume is roughly half of what the dashboards display.

Dashboard trading volume vs. unilateral volume — the latter is the truly important figure for airdrop modeling.

This is critical for airdrop modeling. If Polymarket treats trading volume as a metric, they would only use internal data rather than all the statistics on Dune. Your actual “score” for trading volume is likely only half of what tools like Polycool show.

User Distribution

Regarding airdrop speculation, the most important dataset comes from research by IMDEA Networks Institute, covering over 86 million trades (April 2024 – April 2025).

• Only 0.51% of addresses achieved profits exceeding $1,000;
• Only 1.74% of addresses (estimated) had trading volume over $50,000;
• The top three arbitrage addresses extracted $4.2 million in “risk-free profit”;
• The top traders can profit over ten million dollars.

In terms of LP rewards, the stratification is even more apparent.

79% of traders have never earned even $1 in LP rewards — this is a currently overlooked interaction. Out of 314,000 traders, only 66,567 wallets have received LP rewards. This means only 21% of traders have provided liquidity. Compared to overall participation, this reward mechanism is clearly undervalued.

Lower engagement levels are generally considered “underestimated” signals in airdrop models.

Historical Airdrop Precedents: What Have They Taught Us?

All major DeFi airdrops reward “active behavior,” not “profitability.” Polymarket will follow the same logic.

Commonalities among large-scale airdrops include:

• Pure equal distribution can be exploited by sybil attacks (Polymarket will definitely not distribute evenly);
• Distribution based solely on volume can lead to over-concentration among whales (PR risks + SEC risks);
• Best strategies: tiered levels + reward caps + multi-dimensional metrics (volume + LP + diversity + activity duration);
• In all major airdrops, losers are also rewarded — profit and loss (PnL) is not the standard.

This last point is crucial: if you trade $100,000 and lose $20,000, you are more likely to receive rewards than someone who profits $500 on a $1,000 trade. Platforms don’t want to incentivize only profitable trades — that makes it easier to filter insiders.

Reverse Thinking: How to Limit Whales?

Some airdrop calculators on the market use the simplest proportional volume model: airdrop share = individual volume / total volume × total airdrop amount.

This is incorrect, because mainstream airdrops typically use a “diminishing curve.”

I prefer a model where Polymarket limits whale airdrops via square root compression — for example, if volume increases fourfold, the score only doubles. This would drastically change the results for whale-targeted airdrops.

So how much would top wallets receive? Suppose the total POLY supply is 10 billion tokens, with 7.5% allocated for community airdrops (750 million POLY), and the TGE FDV is between $3 billion and $9 billion.

Without caps on individual addresses, if trading volume is $85 million (taking top trader fredi999 as an example), the model estimates they could receive about 3–5 million POLY. At a $9 billion FDV, that’s roughly $30–$45 million. Theoretically feasible, but PR-wise, very poor.

A more realistic approach is to cap airdrops per address, say between 500,000 and 2 million POLY. At a $5 billion FDV, top addresses could get around $4.5–$10 million.

“LP” and “Volume”: Where Are the Opportunities Now?

If you start interacting with Polymarket in February 2026 with a $5,000 principal, mathematically, the more advantageous approach for new participants is to focus on LP.

• To earn $49 in LP rewards (top 10%), you need to place limit orders in high-reward markets continuously. Using $500–$1,000 capital, this can be achieved within 30–60 days.
• To earn $1,563 in LP rewards (top 1%), higher capital or sustained high-frequency participation is required.

Regarding volume, you should avoid wash trading and aim to accumulate genuine trading volume:

1. Trade in more than five different categories of markets (politics, crypto, sports, science, culture);
2. Hold positions for at least 1–24 hours before closing;
3. Avoid spoofing across different addresses on the same market;
4. Moderate losses — proof of “real participation”;
5. Target market volume > $500,000 (Polymarket may filter micro-markets);
6. Single bet size: $50–$500.

Airdrop Modeling Predictions

Airdrops won’t be as most expect.

Most guesses are based on simple volume-weighted distribution, but Polymarket will do smarter, more interesting things. They have on-chain LP data, which is clean, verifiable, and denominated in USD. They also have volume data that can filter out sybil attacks. Plus, they have data on wallet age, market diversity, and geographic distribution.

Here’s my model — note that Polymarket has not confirmed any of this, so it’s purely my speculation.

• Volume weight: 40% — using a square root compression formula, with a minimum threshold around $500;
• LP rewards weight: 35% — on-chain verifiable, resistant to sybil attacks;
• Market diversity weight: 15% — number of independent markets participated in;
• Activity duration weight: 10% — active months before snapshot.

Additionally, Polymarket will likely impose caps on rewards per address (possibly $500,000), otherwise the top 50 addresses could dominate, undermining community narrative. Losers will be rewarded equally with winners of similar volume — profit isn’t the standard. This is philosophically inconsistent and would create distorted incentives.

79% of traders have never received even $1 in LP rewards. If LP weight accounts for 35% of the airdrop formula, the most capital-efficient behavior now is to place limit orders in high-volume markets and start accumulating traceable on-chain proof of contribution.

In short, POLY could become the largest prediction market airdrop in history. With a $9 billion FDV, the total community airdrop could reach $450 million to $900 million. Even capturing just 0.1% of that would be $450,000. That’s why optimizing LP data now is more important than most realize.