Is Polymarket starting to charge fees?

Recently, in the 15-minute crypto prediction markets on Polymarket, I’ve been feeling more and more strongly about one thing:

This market, in the long run, isn’t really a game against other people, but a game against a few extremely efficient machines.

After observing for a while, I noticed several profit curves that hardly look like trading, but more like automatic money printing.

If you’re somewhat familiar with this market, you’ve probably seen these accounts before, but it’s still worth taking a closer look:

In just over a month, they have collectively taken around $1.2 million from the 15-minute crypto markets.
They’re not heavily betting on directions, but rather very steadily eating up structure, speed, and execution.

It’s in this context that Polymarket recently introduced a rule adjustment specifically targeting the 15-minute crypto markets.

It’s not a full fee implementation,
but only charges takers, while makers not only are not charged but can also earn rebates.
The taker fee follows a “bell curve,” with the highest cost at the middle probability, and extremely low probabilities approaching 0,
and all the money paid by takers is 100% redistributed to liquidity providers and makers.

It’s hard not to wonder:
Is this deliberately designed to increase the cost of “high-speed order matching,”
so that those willing to place orders and provide liquidity—even manually—can still participate, rather than being solely exploited by bots?

I’ve also been studying the behavior patterns of these accounts recently, while developing trading logic.
Most parts are already working smoothly,
the only persistent bottleneck is order placement speed—during critical windows, I really can’t compete with them.

So now I’m very curious:
Will this rule adjustment have a real impact on these kinds of bots?
Or have they already prepared for the next phase?

If you’re also researching Polymarket or developing similar trading strategies,
feel free to connect. I’m still experimenting and observing as I go.

#Polymarket