Music fans trying to buy concert tickets, Sara Connor and crypto traders all have one thing in common: they hate bots. And while there is no help for Ticketmaster or Terminator woes, Polymarket has implemented deterrents against bot-fueled trading, much to its users’ delight.

Blockchain-based prediction market giant Polymarket quietly updated its documentation on Tuesday to enable taker-only fees on 15-minute crypto up/down markets. Until now, the global Polymarket platform has remained fee-free.

“We’re rolling out Maker Rebates for 15-minute crypto markets; a program designed to make these fast-moving markets deeper, tighter, and easier to trade,” reads the new documentation. “Market makers who provide active liquidity (orders that get filled) earn daily USDC rebates, proportional to the liquidity they provide.”

Polymarket noted that these new fees scale with each trade size and vary along the probability curve. The highest fees are at 50% probability, and fees decrease toward the extremes (0% and 100%).

In the example given, someone buying:

As Polymarket noted, these are not simple operational fees. The fees are pooled into a daily USDC rebate (“Rebates are calculated and distributed every day”) and distributed on a performance-based level (“You earn based on the share of liquidity you provided that actually got taken.”)

Polymarket’s short-duration crypto markets have become more of a high-activity niche since launching in late 2025. This, according to The Block, has drawn the attention of “algorithmic traders, bots, and market makers seeking to arbitrage mispricings in quickly resolving contracts.”

“This is a big shift for Polymarket, said one X user. “Crypto trading Bots that were farming 15m markets with pure taker strategies and printing hundreds of thousands will likely see profits shrink hard. At the same time, this clearly incentivizes maker-style bots. Liquidity providers now get daily USDC rebates funded by those taker fees. In other words, the platform doesn’t take anything for itself – it’s redistributing value from takers to makers.”

“I like these changes,” said another. “It’ll definitely be harder for bots now.”

“15 m farms just got way harder,” said one X user, while another wondered if “there will be more maker bots” in the wake of these changes.

Overall, traders saw this as a good move, saying Polymarket was “still empowering the community to make the orderbooks better.”

The move comes a month after MetaMask, a leading crypto wallet platform, announced a partnership with Polymarket to integrate prediction markets into its user experience. MetaMask subscribers can now browse and trade on event contracts directly in the mobile app, but at a cost: MetaMask would charge a 4% fee on every trade, split between MetaMask and Polymarket. 

This seems like a convenience fee for those who don’t want to switch between MetaMask and Polymarket (which doesn’t charge a fee per trade on its standalone platform). As our analysis determined, this was a win-win for each party but not so much for traders.

Polymarket returned to the U.S. in December after nearly four years of operating strictly outside of the U.S. The prediction market exchange was barred from operating in the U.S. after the Joe Biden–era Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) determined that it had been operating an unregistered derivatives exchange. 

Polymarket’s founder, Shayne Coplan, spent the past three years navigating the required hurdles to become CFTC-compliant. It acquired QCX, a licensed derivatives exchange and clearinghouse, for $112 million in 2025, clearing the way for its return. After getting the green light from the CFTC, Polymarket began relaunching its U.S.-facing app to waitlisted users in late 2025. 

The post Polymarket Users Approve Of New Fees On 15-Minute Crypto Markets appeared first on DeFi Rate.

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