Polymarket Rebuilds Its Core Smart Contracts With Protocol V2, Targets Nov. 2 Switchover

Polymarket is replacing the smart contracts its prediction markets have run on since launch. Head of Protocol Rajath Alex introduced Polymarket Protocol V2 on X on Monday, describing it as a rebuild “from the position token up.”

A small set of canary markets started trading on V2 in production that day and will keep running through Oct. 30, Alex wrote. Polymarket has tentatively scheduled new markets to move to the system on Nov. 2.

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“Polymarket currently runs on smart contracts that were never designed for what it became,” Alex wrote.

The platform was built on the Conditional Tokens Framework, general-purpose code Gnosis released in 2019. According to Alex, each market type Polymarket added later needed its own contract stacked in front of that framework: an adapter for its pUSD collateral, a wrapped-collateral token for neg-risk markets, a second exchange and a separate UMA adapter per market type.

“It worked, and it carried Polymarket this far,” he wrote. “But every new feature meant another layer, another approval for you, another contract for integrators, and another thing that can’t be changed once it’s deployed.”

V2 consolidates that setup into a single ERC-1155 contract for positions, pUSD as the only collateral, one exchange for all market types and one router. Position IDs now carry the market type, market and outcome inside them, letting the protocol identify a position without extra lookups.

Four market modules ship at launch: binary, atomic neg-risk, incremental neg-risk and combinatorial. A new OracleAggregator handles resolution and can connect to UMA, Chainlink and future oracles. The contracts are also designed to bridge positions, collateral and resolutions to other chains, which Polymarket plans to switch on when it expands beyond one network. The system can be upgraded through a governance process, and Alex listed scalar resolution and directional collateral return as follow-on features in development.

Alex wrote that Cantina, Certora, Quantstamp, Sigma Prime, Zellic and Pashov Audit Group audited the code and that Certora also formally verified it. A bug bounty pays up to $5 million for critical findings.

For people using the app or website, “No technical migration is required,” Polymarket’s migration guide says, beyond accepting approval prompts. The guide adds that positions already held under the old framework will not be converted. Developers and market makers get the four-week canary period, with weekly office hours, to integrate. Polymarket also released Data API V2, a Rust service running on its in-house onchain indexer.

The rebuild follows Polymarket’s April overhaul, when it swapped the bridged USDC.e it had used on Polygon for pUSD, its own collateral token redeemable 1:1 for Circle’s USDC.

“It’s been a labor of love for the team, and it’s the base we’ll be building on for a long time,” Alex wrote.

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