A veteran Polymarket user’s heartfelt message: Actually, we have already been overtaken by our competitors.

Author: Jonah

Translation: Jiahui, ChainCatcher

I’ve had this article in my hands for a while now.

I’ve been wanting to write it, but kept holding back, hoping things could quietly self-correct. Until this morning, when Bloomberg published “Polymarket Loses Its Lead in Prediction Markets Due to Delays and Rebounds,” to be honest, this report already said most of what I wanted to say. So from now on, I will quote extensively, letting it share some of the weight.

Polymarket is facing increasing operational setbacks in trying to reach its key audience(U.S. customers), and has fallen behind its main competitors. From bloomberg.com

This headline hits hard. And it should.

Since mid-2024, I’ve been watching Polymarket. I agree with its vision, defending the platform during every regulatory panic, and recommending it to every trader I know. Prediction markets are one of the most important financial infrastructures of the past decade, and Polymarket is the company I’ve always hoped would win this race.

So this isn’t an attack piece. It’s a letter to something I truly care about.

Shayne Coplan, and the entire team, we need to talk.

The current situation is brutal

Let’s start with the data.

According to reports, Kalshi’s valuation is about $22 billion, while Polymarket’s negotiated valuation is around $15 billion. For a competitor that Polymarket has long outpaced, that’s a gap of about $7 billion. Year-to-date trading volume: Kalshi about $37 billion, Polymarket about $29 billion. U.S. market share: Kalshi approaching 90%, while Polymarket remains stuck behind the waiting list.

A year ago, the mainstream narrative was still “Polymarket is the prediction market leader, Kalshi is the regulated upstart.” Today, that narrative has completely flipped. Kalshi has become the compliant, fast-delivering, institutionally credible option, while Polymarket has become the old-school crypto-native player constantly tripping over itself.

That lead was originally firmly in our hands. Now, we’re letting it slip away.

The platform itself isn’t fully operational yet

This must be said plainly: the core product has real issues, yet the company behaves as if nothing’s wrong.

Last weekend, Polymarket delayed at least a week for the CLOB V2 migration, the new pUSD collateral token, and the rebuilt matching engine. Honestly, delaying was the right decision. The developer community had been calling for weeks, saying there wasn’t enough time for a clean migration and integration. Launching an incomplete product would have worse consequences than a delay.

So, delays are fine; in fact, they’re a good thing.

What’s embarrassing is how the announcement was made.

From what’s circulating in the community: the news of the delay was first posted on Twitter, but the official migration announcement, which included the migration guide, hadn’t even been published initially. The migration guide that followed still referenced outdated, invalid dates. Then, a correction was issued, adding another correction on top.

Structurally, this is exactly the kind of communication chaos that a “well-organized operation” should never produce.

Then, on Monday, a scheduled five-minute restart ran over an hour. During peak trading hours on a weekday, the exchange was effectively offline. Just another small issue piling up.

As Bloomberg quoted a Polymarket spokesperson: “You can’t build the most interesting consumer finance product of the past few years without becoming a well-oiled operational machine.” That’s true; it’s the vision. But the reality is, this machine keeps breaking down over small, avoidable issues, and these issues are stacking into a pattern.

And these aren’t isolated incidents:

• Passive fee adjustments in sports and crypto markets, with poor communication
• The team announced migration months ago, but infrastructure delays kept recurring
• Scheduled maintenance windows repeatedly exceeded announced durations
• The U.S. app, in “mobile-only, sports-only, invite-only” testing phase, has been stalled for months, with reports of hundreds of thousands still on the waiting list

“Crypto-native” was supposed to mean more transparent, resilient, and responsible than traditional platforms, not an excuse for poor UX and unreliable infrastructure.

The community is patient, but patience isn’t unlimited. Every outage, every missed deadline, every vague status update pushes edge users toward the opponent who just “runs smoothly.”

Priorities are all wrong

What really broke my composure yesterday was this.

The platform objectively isn’t at 100%. The exchange upgrade was delayed. The U.S. app isn’t fully open. A million people are on the waiting list. Traders worldwide were still experiencing outages Monday afternoon.

And then yesterday, Polymarket announced the launch of perpetual contracts.

We price the future. Now you can leverage it. Perpetual contracts are coming to Polymarket. Sign up for early access.

Perpetual contracts are a great product, and long-term, they’re definitely worth including in the roadmap. But right now, releasing — or even just announcing — them, just days after infrastructure delays and a severe restart timeout, while the U.S. app is still in testing, sends only one message to most community members: “Money grab.”

Perpetual contracts are the highest-cost, highest-leverage, highest-volume product in crypto, the fastest way to extract revenue from existing users. Announcing it when core exchanges are still unstable, and a million Americans are still locked out, clearly signals where the team’s real priorities lie: monetize the existing traders first, the platform’s core issues later, and those locked out even further down the line.

Whether intentional or not, that’s the message this move sends: revenue takes precedence over platform stability. Launching new paid products over fixing existing ones. Harvesting current users instead of improving the experience for everyone — both existing and waiting.

Honestly, interpreting this as “money grabbing” might even be too polite.

Look at the order of priorities. Kalshi announced its crypto perpetual product “Timeless”: specific date, specific venue, specific launch event — April 27 in New York, a complete product, delivered a week later.

Breaking: The first CFTC-regulated prediction market exchange in the U.S., @Kalshi, has chosen Pyth Pro as its exclusive data layer for commodities. Gold, silver, oil, natural gas, copper, corn, soybeans, wheat. Why this matters.

Within days, Polymarket’s response was… a pre-registration page for early access. No release date, no venue, no product specs, no actual product. Just a marketing tweet, a slogan “We price the future, now you can leverage it,” and a form to collect accounts.

That’s not a product launch; it’s a press release disguised as a launch event. When you respond to a competitor with content that’s clearly hollow, you’re no longer setting the pace — you’re chasing it. And waiting in line for a chance?

This is a track defined by Polymarket itself. Once a pioneer, a cultural phenomenon, the reigning champion with years of first-mover advantage. Today, in the derivatives space, Polymarket has become the follower, using a registration form as PR material just because Kalshi announced first.

This is the most awkward sentence in the entire letter, but it’s also exactly what Bloomberg’s report is really about.

The operational sequence should be very simple:

2. U.S. App. Fully open, no waiting list, stable operation, complete features. This is Polymarket’s biggest leverage, yet it’s been blocked for months, letting Kalshi eat into the U.S. retail market. This must be the top priority. Not second, first.
3. Core platform reliability. Complete the CLOB V2 migration, smoothly transition to pUSD, avoid missed maintenance windows, make the exchange a “set-and-forget” tool for traders.
4. Then, only after these are achieved, expand into new markets, perpetual contracts, and other features on the whiteboard.

Right now, the order is reversed, and the community sees it clearly.

The startup phase is over

Bloomberg’s article put on display what the community has been discussing for months: delays, distractions, and a culture still reminiscent of a 2021 scrappy startup — despite Polymarket now holding billions in open contracts, a major ICE partnership, CFTC registration via QCEX acquisition, and an MLB collaboration.

That scrappy startup era is over, and it must be.

You’re no longer facing a forum or niche crypto app. You’re up against a company with a CFTC license, institutional backing, and New York roots — delivering on time, taken seriously by regulators, counterparties, and media.

This is the maturity phase every major financial phenomenon must go through. Coinbase made it, Stripe made it, every serious trading venue must eventually stop operating like a “group chat” and become — to borrow the spokesperson’s words — a well-oiled operational machine.

Specifically, this means bringing in truly mature professionals in operations, risk management, and PR. It means cutting out distractions that don’t serve U.S. expansion and core stability. It means over-communicating during issues, providing real post-mortems and accountability, not just brief status updates and silence afterward.

This isn’t hostility. It’s what every serious financial institution must do in the end. Polymarket is now one of them. Act accordingly.

Why I still believe in Polymarket

That said, here’s why I haven’t left this platform, and why I don’t think the race is over.

ICE is on your side. Jeffrey Sprecher won’t write a check for a vapor project. The Intercontinental Exchange, parent of NYSE, led a funding round last fall — and the market still hasn’t fully priced that in. You now have direct access to one of the most mature market infrastructure operators in the world. Use it.

MLB partnership is a top-tier boost. It signals that the endgame isn’t “just another betting app,” but making prediction markets a mainstream, embedded financial infrastructure. Sports leagues, TV networks, traditional finance — all converging on the same order book. That’s revolutionary. Kalshi clearly lacks this cultural reach.

Brand is iconic. No matter what, in public perception, Polymarket is almost synonymous with prediction markets. The election cycle cemented this, with the platform repeatedly cited by journalists, hedge funds, and meme accounts. That’s a moat most companies can’t buy.

The community is still here. Those who appeared early, scaled up during the 2024 election, and endured all the growing pains — they haven’t left. We want to win, and we want to see you win. That’s why we’re writing this letter, not quietly shifting volume elsewhere.

Bring the victory home

Honestly: Kalshi is winning this quarter, maybe even this year.

But Polymarket can still win this decade. The brand, partnerships, community, regulatory standing via QCEX, ICE relationships — all still there, nothing lost. They’re just not being fully leveraged because the team is pushing the wrong things in the wrong order.

The simple ask:

Fix the platform. Launch the U.S. app. Before rolling out new products, stabilize the existing ones. Truly become the well-oiled operation your supporters believe you are.

The community is still with you, believers are still here. But the window to narrow the gap is narrower than six months ago, and it will be even narrower in six months.

Fix the platform first. Then bring the victory home.

An experienced Polymarket user writes this, more eager than anyone else, hoping that one day, he won’t have to write such a letter again.