u/bestvape

I analyzed 250 top Polymarket politics wallets. 0 were safe to blindly copy.

But many were still useful.

That changed how I think about wallet leaderboards.

The useful output is not:

“Here are wallets to copy.”

It is:

• which wallets to ignore completely
• which wallets are worth studying
• what kind of signal they provide
• what the key risks are if you blindly copy them
• what rules would make them safer to use

1. Which wallets to ignore completely

Some wallets looked too hard to use safely:

• timing-dependent edge
• one-win PnL concentration
• automated/high-frequency activity
• open or unresolved gains
• no obvious manually repeatable strategy

Good trader ≠ good copy target.

2. Which wallets are worth studying

There were still real signals:

• 22% looked worth studying further
• 11% were building directional positions
• 10% had cleaner PnL profiles
• 7% were useful for market/theme discovery
• 1% were finding longshot/asymmetric ideas

So the signal was not zero.

It just was not “copy every trade.”

3. What signal they provide

Some wallets are useful for finding markets.

Some for spotting accumulation.

Some for studying repeatable strategies.

Some for finding cleaner PnL profiles.

Some only for longshot ideas.

Each should be used differently.

4. What risks come from blindly copying

The same scan found:

• 94% had high copy-trading risk
• 87% had low manual copyability
• 68% had execution/automation risk
• 48% looked like poor signal sources

Copying can fail because:

• they entered earlier
• the market already moved
• they trade too fast
• the edge relies on automation
• PnL came from one big win
• gains are still unresolved

5. What rules make it safer

For wallets that still look useful, I’d want guardrails:

• only copy accumulators near their average entry
• avoid chasing after large moves
• use high-frequency wallets for discovery, not copying
• discount unresolved/open PnL
• size longshot ideas very small
• avoid one-win wallets
• check whether the visible wallet shows the full strategy

So the better question is not:

“Who made money?”

It is:

“What is this wallet useful for, what could go wrong, and what rules stop me copying it badly?”

I put together a small wallet breakdown using this framework.

Happy to share if useful.

I’ve been digging into the top Polymarket leaderboard wallets because I kept seeing people talk about “god wallets” / high PnL wallets as if they’re automatically worth following.

At first I was mostly looking at headline PnL, but that gets misleading pretty quickly.

So I ran the top 50 leaderboard wallets through a few extra checks:

• realised PnL vs possible impaired/resolved positions
• live open-position PnL
• PnL concentration
• whether activity looks like accumulation, scalping, or market making
• whether the wallet seems realistically followable

A few weird things stood out.

First: some huge headline PnL wallets look way less clean once you account for possible impaired/resolved exposure.

One wallet had around $19.7m closed realised PnL, but the visible component net estimate came out around -$7.1m after possible impaired/resolved exposure.

Another had around $19.3m closed realised PnL, but the visible component net estimate came out around -$23.2m.

I’m not treating this as definitive accounting, but as a flag it’s pretty useful.

Second: high activity doesn’t always mean scalper/bot.

Some wallets with tons of activity looked more like directional accumulators — lots of repeated same-side buying, low-ish turnover, and position building rather than constant flipping.

That matters because a high-frequency scalper is basically useless to copy manually, but a directional accumulator might at least be worth watching for themes.

Third: PnL concentration is a big deal.

Some wallets have strong headline PnL, but a small number of markets drive most of it. That’s very different from a wallet grinding across lots of resolved markets.

My main takeaway so far:

headline PnL is a weak signal by itself.

The better questions are:

• is the PnL clean?
• are there possible dead/impaired positions?
• is the PnL concentrated in one or two big hits?
• what type of trader is this?
• is the strategy actually followable?

I’ve got the first top-50 screen in a rough table now, ranked by PnL integrity, concentration, strategy type, and copyability.

Happy to share the clean/followable wallet list if useful. Also curious which category people would want next — politics, sports, geopolitics, or crypto/macro.

I’ve been testing a small wallet-audit script for Polymarket and would be keen for feedback from people here.

The basic idea is:

high PnL ≠ clean PnL
clean PnL ≠ copyable strategy

The script looks at things like:

- closed realised PnL
- live open-position PnL
- possible impaired/resolved exposure
- whether activity looks like scalping vs accumulation
- concentration risk
- whether the strategy looks followable by a normal person

One wallet I checked looked profitable on the surface, but the split was more interesting:

- around $3.08m closed realised PnL
- around -$32k live open-position PnL
- around -$1.08m flagged as possible impaired/resolved cash PnL
- strategy looked more like directional accumulation than arb/scalping

So the wallet may still be profitable, but the headline PnL alone didn’t really tell the full story.

I’m trying to work out if this is actually useful for people who follow wallets, or if it’s just interesting data.

If anyone has a wallet they think is worth checking, drop it here and I’ll run a few. Also keen to hear what metrics people would actually care about before deciding whether a wallet is worth following.

I’ve been testing a small script to sanity check Polymarket wallets before blindly following them.

Main idea:

high PnL ≠ clean PnL
clean PnL ≠ copyable strategy

One wallet I checked had:

• $3.08m closed realised PnL
• only about -$32k live open-position PnL
• around -$1.08m in positions flagged as possibly impaired/resolved
• strategy looked more like directional accumulation than arb/scalping

So the wallet may still be profitable, but the headline PnL doesn’t tell the whole story.

Also, high trade count alone seems misleading. Some wallets that look “botty” are just accumulating with lots of small same-side fills.

Still rough, but if anyone has a Polymarket wallet they’re thinking about following, drop it here or DM me and I’ll run a quick check on a few.