How PolyConsensus works

PolyConsensus shows what the best-performing Polymarket traders actually hold. This page explains whose positions we count, how a consensus is formed, what the badges mean and, just as important, what the numbers do not tell you.

Whose positions we count

We follow around 2,000 to 2,500 Polymarket wallets at any time. They come from three places:

• Polymarket's monthly top 1,000 by profit. The list is read again every hour. A wallet that enters the top 1,000 is tracked from the next check; one that drops out stays tracked for 30 days before it is released.
• About 460 wallets picked by hand before October 2026. They are always tracked.
• Wallets that just left the monthly list. The top 1,000 changes a lot from month to month, and those still inside their 30 days are what lift the total above the two groups above.

A month's profit can be luck, so wallets from the monthly list also have to show a record. If a wallet has settled at least 10 markets in the last 90 days with $50 or more on one side, we keep it only if it won at least 55% of them. A wallet with fewer than 10 such markets has no verdict yet and stays while its history builds up; hand-picked wallets are not gated. A market where a wallet held both sides is a hedge and does not count.

Everything comes from public sources: trades and positions on the Polygon chain and Polymarket's public data. We see wallets, not people, and we cannot tell what a trader holds on other platforms or what hedges they run outside Polymarket.

What a consensus is

A market gets a consensus when at least 5 tracked wallets hold a position in it. Three rules decide the rest:

• Who counts as a holder. A tracked wallet holding at least 1 share of an outcome. What is left after a trader sells almost everything does not count. Wallets that hold both sides of a market (arbitrage) are left out of the head count.
• Which side is the consensus. The outcome with the most money behind it among holders with at least $100 in the market (shares times average price). If nobody has $100 in, the side with more holders.
• The percentage. The share of holders, one vote per wallet, on that side. "7 of 8 hold Yes (88%)" means seven of eight wallets, whatever their size.

You will also see the market's own price for the consensus side, the total value the holders have in the market, and the "smart money entry": the average price the consensus holders paid compared with the price now. All of it describes the present: who holds what, not who will be right.

The signal badges

Each live market gets a score from 0 to 100: up to 40 points for how lopsided the consensus is (80% or more scores highest), up to 30 for how many holders there are, and up to 30 for how much the holders have made on the market so far, then adjusted for momentum, for how late the entry looks, for how concentrated the money is in two wallets, and for how similar markets have turned out. The badge follows the score:

• Strong (70 or more), Medium (40 or more) and Weak (below 40).
• Contrarian: the consensus side is not the side the market prices higher, so the smart money disagrees with the crowd.
• Pending: the market has ended and is waiting for Polymarket's oracle to settle it.
• Won, Lost, 50-50 and Ended after settlement: whether the consensus side was the winner, or the market was refunded at 50-50.

A badge summarises the holders. It is not a prediction and it is not a recommendation to buy.

Trader quality and win rates

Two different records exist, for two different jobs. The 90-day record above decides which leaderboard wallets are tracked. The lifetime record is used to judge a market's holders: among holders with at least $100 in the market, those with at least 20 settled markets and a win rate of 60% or more are counted as quality holders, once on the consensus side and once against it. Developers can read this as the quality field of the API.

The win rates on trader pages count only markets that had a consensus (5 or more tracked holders), and a win is a settled market where the trader's profit was positive. They are optimistic. Polymarket's data on closed positions almost never reports a loss; a position driven to zero tends to be dropped instead of listed as a loss. Measured on one top wallet in September 2026: 6,853 winning positions against 2 losing ones. A win rate in the high nineties is therefore normal here, and it is not a measure of skill.

What the numbers do not mean

• The consensus percentage is not a win probability. 88% of holders on Yes is not an 88% chance of Yes. The market price is a much better estimate, and it already reflects what these traders did.
• The traders' profit is not what following them earns. They are on the list because they already won, which flatters any average. They bought earlier and cheaper than you can, size and exit their own way, and may hedge elsewhere. You buy later, cross the spread and pay Polymarket's fee.
• A consensus on a favourite is mostly a consensus that the favourite wins. Agreement tells you more when it is against the market or when a lot of money is behind it.
• Positions can be stale or incomplete. We read them from fills as they are indexed, with Polymarket's own position data to correct them; a trader who just sold may still show for a few minutes.

What our backtest found

In October 2026 we replayed the site's own rules on past data: holders as they were known at the time, the consensus defined as above, one entry per market at the first signal, held to settlement, $1 a trade, a 1-cent half-spread plus Polymarket's 2026 taker fees. Two windows: March to April 2026 (hand-picked wallets) and October 2 to 22, 2026 (all tracked wallets).

• The plain consensus is informative but not enough. The consensus side won 64.7% of the time at an average price of 64 cents, about a point better than its price. The spread and the fee take two to three points, so it loses a little. Betting the other way loses far more.
• Longshots lose the most. Where the consensus sat on a side priced 5 to 30 cents, following it lost more than a quarter of the money staked.
• Big money and proven holders looked better, but nothing is proven. Both results rest on few trades, one table was read before the best cell was picked, and 5 events made up two thirds of the quality result. Out of 1,293 variations tested, none was statistically significant once we corrected for the number tried, and the two windows often ranked the variations in opposite order.
• The October figures are provisional. We found early timestamps on some trades and are correcting them; a rerun will replace these numbers.

The fair reading: the consensus is a useful way to see what skilled traders hold and where they disagree with the crowd, not a system that beats costs. If you trade, start small, and remember that Polymarket charges fees (see the fee calculator). PolyConsensus adds no fee of its own. This is not investment advice.

Quick answers

Last updated October 24, 2026. Explore: markets, 2026 midterm markets, the trader leaderboard, large trades, analytics, the API, terms and privacy.