Crypto▲ Bullish
Polymarket upgrades up/down markets, offers $1M rewards
Polymarket shifts to TWAP settlement to prevent last-second price manipulation in crypto prediction markets, backed by $1M liquidity rewards.
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Polymarket is changing how its short-duration crypto prediction markets settle. The platform will replace single-price snapshots with a time-weighted average price mechanism powered by Chainlink oracles. The switch goes live on August 7, 2026, at 00:00 UTC.
The problem it solves is straightforward. When a market settles based on one price at one moment, a trader with enough capital can push the price in their favor right before expiry. Polymarket’s fix averages prices over a window of time, making that kind of last-second manipulation far more expensive to pull off.
The new model uses a TWAP, or time-weighted average price. Instead of checking what Bitcoin or Ethereum costs at the exact second a market expires, the system averages prices across a defined window leading up to expiry. For 5-minute markets, that window is 30 seconds. For 15-minute and 4-hour markets, it stretches to 60 seconds.
Chainlink Data Streams will compute and report these TWAPs on-chain. Polymarket said the mainnet feeds will be live by July 31, 2026, giving a week of buffer before the upgrade kicks in.