Polymarket is about to unlock a new annual revenue stream of $54 million

The big Polymarket upgrade expected to roll out over the next few weeks has many users excited, but according to the co-founder of Defillama, the operator of the largest on-chain prediction market might be the biggest winner of all as it is about to unlock a new revenue stream that could easily gross $54 million every year. 

The anonymous co-founder of the leading on-chain analytics platform called out the opportunity in response to an update by the Polymarket team teasing the plan to abandon its USDC.e era for a “new collateral token” – Polymarket USD. 

Cryptopolitan reported earlier that Polymarket is also redesigning its trading engine and adding a new order book as part of its “biggest change to date.” 

Polymarket’s new $54M a year side hustle 

According to 0xngmi, “there’s roughly $1.25bn sitting on user wallets within polymarket,” and the interest the platform could accrue on those funds could come to $54 million in annual revenue, based on current conditions. 

Currently, Polymarket does not have any native or governance tokens issued directly by the platform. It does not have its own blockchain either, with users having to bridge USDC to USDC.e on the Polygon network that it currently operates on. So, most of its revenue comes from fees charged on transactions. According to Defillama data, fees over the last year totaled $167 million, while revenue was around $126 million over the same period. 

That means Polymarket does not generate any additional revenue from the 393.68 million transactions initiated by its 2.49 million users on the Polygon network. Polymarket accounted for $1.08 million of the $1.57 million in fees the network earned over the last 24 hours, consistently reporting 2X to 4X its nearest competitor across terms volume stats. 

The new $54 million annual shortfall 0xngmi noted stems from a critical revenue stream that the new Circle USDC-backed Polymarket USD stablecoin unlocks for the prediction platform. 

The co-founder estimated about $1.25 billion in Polymarket user wallets, including open interest, total value locked, and funds sitting idly in accounts. As long as it’s in Polymarket USD, the platform can earn yields and interest on the underlying assets backing those stablecoins. 

As for plans to launch its own blockchain, Cryptopolitan reported that a Polymarket team member indicated that an L2 network is now a priority after a Polygon downtime in December 2025. 

Polymarket is winning, users aren’t 

For Polymarket, business is good, as the platform retains a strong lead over the competition in the on-chain prediction market category. It also outranks Kalshi as the largest prediction market platform in the world, based on metrics such as monthly transaction count. 

The story is the opposite for Polymarket users, who are deep in the red in terms of profitability. 

According to a report by author and researcher Andrey Sergeenkov, 84.1% of Polymarket traders are hemorrhaging money, with only 15.9% actually making money. Of that total, only 2% of 2.5 million traders have made more than $1,000 throughout their lifetime using the platform. That number dips to 0.32% for users that have earned more than $10,000 and 0.033% breaking the $100,000 ceiling. 

As of December 2025, another researcher who goes by DeFi Oasis in crypto circles reported profitability numbers at a 30:70 split between winners and losers, with a small 0.04% minority accounting for 70% of the $3.7 billion in winnings paid out by the platform at the time. 

While Polymarket has supplemental earning levers to pull, users don’t, as it cannot even share yields with users, at least based on current CLARITY Act conversations. 

The prediction platform recently unveiled its latest $600 million from Intercontinental Exchange, part of the NYSE operator’s previously announced plan to invest up to $2 billion in Polymarket.

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