Polymarket introduced Protocol V2 on Monday, a rebuilt contract system with unified position infrastructure, ahead of its November market migration date.
Key Facts
Polymarket launched Protocol V2 on Monday, replacing the layered contract system it has run on since 2020 with a single unified exchange and position-token standard.
The rebuild has undergone audits from six security firms and formal verification by Certora, backed by a bug bounty of up to $5 million for critical findings.
Canary markets are trading on Protocol V2 now through Oct. 30, with a tentative switchover of new markets on Nov. 2.
Polymarket introduced Protocol V2 on Monday, replacing the patchwork of contracts the platform has run on since 2020 with a single exchange and position token standard, Rajath Alex, Polymarket's head of protocol, said.
Alex announced the rebuild as the platform comes off a period of rapid growth: Polymarket and rival Kalshi had crossed $150 billion in combined lifetime trading volume by April, up from roughly $9 billion in Polymarket's own volume for all of 2024.
Why Polymarket Rebuilt Its Core Contracts
Polymarket's existing base, the Conditional Tokens Framework, is built on code that Gnosis wrote in 2019 for general-purpose use. Each new market type the platform shipped required another contract layered in front of it, including separate adapters for collateral, wrapped tokens for neg-risk markets, and a second exchange for a second market type.
Polymarket overhauled its exchange infrastructure and introduced a native stablecoin earlier this year, before this latest rebuild.
Protocol V2 consolidates that into one ERC-1155 position-token contract, one collateral token, one exchange, and one router. The system's position IDs now encode a market's type, identity, and outcome directly, letting the protocol read that information without separate lookups.
The new architecture also centralizes resolution through an OracleAggregator with pluggable modules for different resolution sources, and treats cross-chain bridging of positions and collateral as a feature to activate later rather than a separate bolt-on.
Audits and a $5 Million Bug Bounty
The rebuilt smart contracts were audited by Cantina, Certora, Quantstamp, Sigma Prime, Zellic and Pashov Audit Group, and formally verified by Certora. Polymarket is offering a bug bounty of up to $5 million for critical vulnerabilities.
Canary markets are trading on Protocol V2 in production through Oct. 30, with new markets tentatively set to move to the system on Nov. 2. Polymarket is also introducing Data API V2, a Rust-based service built on an in-house on-chain indexer, to standardize response formats and support cursor-based pagination for integrators.
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