Original | Odaily Planet Daily (@OdailyChina)
Author | Asher (@Asher_0210)
Yesterday, the "World Cup Champion" prediction event settled with a trading volume of $4.32 billion, surpassing the $3.686 billion volume of the "Winner of the 2024 U.S. Presidential Election" to become the highest-volume single prediction event in Polymarket's history.
Additionally, over the six-week duration of the World Cup, the total notional trading volume on Polymarket’s soccer market reached $8.5 billion, four times the combined trading volume of all other sports during the same period.
The 2024 U.S. election brought Polymarket into the mainstream, while the 2026 World Cup propelled it into the higher-volume sports market. With $8.5 billion in trading volume over six weeks and a single market reaching $4.32 billion, Polymarket not only broke records but also found a traffic engine that operates even faster than the election.
Taking advantage of World Cup traffic, Polymarket quietly increased fees for the sports section.
On July 10, at the latter stage of the World Cup, Polymarket increased trading fees for sports markets.
This adjustment was not announced separately to regular users but was included in the platform’s developer changelog. The taker fee multiplier for the Sports section has been increased from 0.03 to 0.05, while the maker rebate rate has been reduced from 25% to 15%.
The fee has been increased from 0.03 to 0.05, which may seem like a minor change, but actually raises trading costs by nearly 70%. For example, when purchasing 100 shares of a sports event, the fee peaks when the share price is $0.50. Before the adjustment, users paid a maximum of $0.75; after the adjustment, the maximum fee rises to $1.25. As the share price moves closer to $0.01 or $0.99, the fee decreases symmetrically toward both ends, as detailed in the table below.
The sports category has now moved out of Polymarket’s lowest fee tier. Previously, it was grouped with politics, finance, and technology as a lower-cost trading category; after the adjustment, the maximum fee per 100 shares has increased to $1.25, aligning it with the economics, culture, and weather categories, and only below the cryptocurrency market’s $1.75 fee.
Looking back over the past six months, Polymarket’s fee range has been quietly expanding.
In January 2026, Polymarket introduced taker fees on its 15-minute cryptocurrency markets; in February, the fees expanded to select college basketball and Serie A markets; in March, all newly launched crypto markets began charging fees; following the launch of Fee Structure V2 at the end of March, categories such as politics, finance, economics, culture, weather, and technology were gradually included.
For the platform, once user habits are established, increasing transaction fees has not led to significant user attrition, yet generates more revenue from the same trading volume.
POLY airdrop controversy resurges—how much longer must users wait?
Recently, the community noticed that Polymarket’s official affiliated account, Polymarket Traders, deleted a tweet posted on May 13. The original tweet had been interpreted by the community as an暗示 of a POLY airdrop. After the tweet was removed, many users began reviewing the account’s historical posts, and discussions around whether the airdrop had changed have reignited.
The market is so sensitive because Polymarket’s token launch is no longer baseless speculation. In October 2025, Polymarket’s Chief Marketing Officer, Matthew Modabber, explicitly stated on a podcast: “There will be a token, and there will be an airdrop.” He also noted that Polymarket’s top priority at the time was re-entering the U.S. market, and that the token plan would proceed after establishing operations in the U.S., while praising Hyperliquid’s token launch approach.
This statement initially led the community to believe that POLY was only a matter of time. Subsequently, trading volume, market-making size, and active days were also regarded by many users as potential airdrop weightings. Even though the platform never disclosed snapshot times or allocation rules, users continued trading, waiting for the token launch plan to be fully realized.
The issue is that the U.S. operations have already moved forward, and the most popular World Cup has concluded, yet POLY has still not released a timeline. Careful users noticed that Polymarket’s help center recently added a notice stating the platform “has not announced any plans for an airdrop or token generation event,” and warned users to be cautious of scams claiming to be related to an airdrop. This does not mean POLY has been canceled, but for users who have been waiting so long, the question is no longer whether Polymarket will issue a token—it’s how much longer this “future” will be delayed.
Currently, the community has two main interpretations for the delay. One view is that Polymarket is waiting for a more favorable regulatory window; the platform is still expanding its operations in the U.S., and token issuance or airdrops could introduce additional regulatory challenges. Before a formal plan is finalized, removing direct references to associated accounts may simply be an effort to tighten external messaging.
Another perspective holds that Polymarket has no urgent need to launch a token and could instead become the next OpenSea. In the past, platforms relied on airdrop expectations to attract users, boost trading volume, and enhance liquidity; today, Polymarket already boasts a large user base and genuine revenue, with fees steadily increasing. As the platform becomes less dependent on a token, the priority of POLY may naturally continue to decline.
In the past, the community discussed how POLY would be airdropped and whether trading volume would count toward weight; now, the discussion has shifted to how much longer we must wait and what the next anticipated milestone will be. Polymarket, which has launched countless prediction markets, still cannot provide a settlement date for its own airdrop.