Polymarket unveils plans for trading engine overhaul, native stablecoin

Polymarket, the largest fully onchain prediction market, plans to revamp its platform, including a rebuilt trading engine and the introduction of a native Polymarket USD stablecoin. 

“We're upgrading the entire Polymarket exchange stack over the next 2-3 weeks. New contracts. New order book. New collateral token,” Polymarket posted to X on Monday. 

In particular, Polymarket is rolling out an upgraded Polymarket CTF Exchange V2, the overarching smart contract that manages its onchain operations. 

With V2, Polymarket’s faster and more efficient matching engine will require fewer operations to validate and pair orders, as well as lower gas consumption. Similarly, the platform’s order Struct — the data structure used to define orders — will pare down the number of required fields. 

Polymarket noted this is its biggest platform change since launch. The move comes after months of consistent growth and increasing competition, not just from rival prediction market Kalshi, but a growing roster of offerings from platforms like Coinbase, Crypto.com, and even DraftKings. 

V2 will feature an updated Central Limit Order Book, or CLOB, that combines some elements of offchain order books with onchain execution. The team noted that developers building bots or custom integrations with the CLOB will have to “update your SDK and re-sign orders with the new struct,” though most Polymarket users will only be impacted during the actual migration. 

“During the upgrade, all existing order books will be cleared. There will be a short maintenance window. We'll announce the exact date and time at least one week in advance,” Polymarket said. 

Big changes ahead 

Perhaps the biggest change for retail traders will be Polymarket’s added support for EIP-1271, the Ethereum standard that allows smart contract wallets to sign orders directly on Polymarket. This will make it easier for multi-sig wallets like Safe to interact directly with Polymarket. 

Additionally, Polymarket said it is introducing a new collateral token, Polymarket USD, to migrate away from USDC.e, a bridged version of USDC on Polygon. Some users have raised concerns about USDC.e, because it is not the official native version of USDC issued by Circle on Polygon. 

Polymarket USD will be backed 1:1 by USDC. The startup announced first in February that it was moving away from USDC.e in favor of a native version of USDC issued by Circle.

“For most users, this transition is seamless. The frontend handles wrapping automatically with a one-time approval prompt,” Polymarket said, adding that some power users will have to wrap their USDC.e or USDC into Polymarket USD via the Collateral Onramp contract's wrap() function.

Polymarket’s announcement on Monday did not mention the POLY token that executives have previously said was being explored. 

The Block previously reported that Polymarket is once again in the market to raise capital, now with a near $20 billion valuation. The startup, launched in 2020, is backed by New York Stock Exchange parent Intercontinental Exchange.