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- Polymarket has reportedly begun auditing startup partners whose apps may have enabled users to copy trades from accounts suspected of insider trading.
- The review comes as the prediction market platform faces growing pressure to show it can police market integrity while pursuing a valuation near $20 billion.
Polymarket is reportedly auditing a group of startup partners after concerns emerged that some of their tools may have helped users mirror trades from accounts suspected of using insider information.
According to the report, the prediction market company launched the review after startup apps tied to its ecosystem began surfacing the activity of successful traders to their own users. In practice, that meant trades from accounts seen as unusually accurate, and potentially suspicious, could be copied by a wider crowd.
A growth strategy starts colliding with market integrity
The issue appears to trace back to a program Polymarket introduced late last year to support startups that routed trades into its marketplace. That effort was meant to broaden access and encourage a more active surrounding ecosystem. Instead, it seems to have created a more awkward side effect.
Some of those companies reportedly began identifying accounts believed to have an informational edge and passing that activity on to customers, effectively turning suspected insider behavior into a signal others could follow.
That is a problem for any market, but especially for one like Polymarket, where information asymmetry can drive outsized returns and where market outcomes are often tied to fast-moving political, economic or regulatory events.
The audit lands at a sensitive moment for Polymarket
The timing is not ideal. Polymarket is reportedly seeking a valuation of roughly $20 billion, which makes questions around market surveillance and rule enforcement harder to brush aside as growing pains.
Prediction markets tend to live on a simple promise: prices should reflect collective information, not privileged access hidden behind a few wallets. Once users begin to suspect that well-connected traders are consistently moving first, or that others are profiting by simply tailing them, the credibility of the whole system starts to look thinner.
What Polymarket seems to be confronting now is not only whether insider trading exists on its platform, but whether parts of its own startup ecosystem may have made that problem more visible, more efficient and easier to monetize.
