Polymarket quietly introduces Taker fees in the 15-minute crypto market

BlockBeats News, January 6 — Prediction market platform Polymarket recently updated its official documentation, indicating the introduction of taker-only fees in its 15-minute cycle cryptocurrency price movement markets. This marks a shift in its long-standing “zero fee” trading model.

According to the update, the relevant fees will be used to fund market maker liquidity incentives. All fees paid by takers will be returned daily to liquidity providers in USDC, rather than being retained by the platform. This adjustment applies only to the 15-minute crypto markets; most other markets still maintain zero fees.

Fee levels vary with market probabilities, reaching the highest when the price is near 50%, and approaching zero as it nears 0% or 100%. Using the official example, trading 100 contracts at a $0.50 price results in approximately $1.56 in fees, which accounts for about 3% of the transaction amount at the peak of the fee curve.

This adjustment was not announced with an official statement, but the document history shows that the relevant terms are newly added. The community generally believes that this change is not a platform-wide fee implementation but an optimization of market structure targeting high-frequency bots and wash trading, aiming to improve liquidity quality and narrow spreads. Polymarket states that long-term event markets, political markets, and non-crypto prediction markets are unaffected, and the overall impact on ordinary users is limited.