One wallet, two profit numbers
Two tools can show the same Polymarket wallet with profit figures far apart at the same moment, and neither has to be broken. They only have to count different things: realized against mark-to-market, redeemed against redeemable, one venue against both, fees in against fees out. A P&L number means little until someone names the accounting basis behind it.
Why Polymarket trader P&L needs a named basis
There are two natural ways to compute a wallet's profit. A portfolio basis asks the provider for the account-level total. A per-market basis sums stored market rows. Merges, redeems, and maker rebates belong to no single market row, so a per-market sum is a diagnostic, not a second account total.
Polymarket's own surfaces mix these bases in ways that are not always labeled. A leaderboard position can reflect one accounting path while a profile or an independent recomputation reflects another. Before you compare two P&L figures, check that they share a basis, a scope, and a retrieval time. If any of the three is unnamed, the two figures are not comparable.
What recomputation found in our own pipeline
Our pipeline used to add per-market realized P&L rows into a wallet total. That rollup overstated Polymarket's account totals by 7 to 10 times on some wallets and could flip the sign, so we retired it. Realized P&L now comes from Polymarket's own position accounting: net realized P&L with fees included and credited maker and taker rebates added. Rewards, yield, and referral income are left out.
Daily P&L is a separate, mark-to-market series: each day revalues open positions at current prices instead of waiting for cash to be realized. The replayed equity curve, cash plus the open-position mark, is reconciled against Polymarket's total P&L so the two cannot drift apart unnoticed. The details are at 0xinsider.com/transparency.
How to read a P&L claim
When any site shows you a trader's profit, ask three questions. Which basis: provider portfolio total, per-market sum, or a replay? Which scope: all markets, resolved markets only, or a filtered window? Which clock: when was the underlying record retrieved? A figure with all three named is checkable. A figure missing any of them is not.
On 0xinsider, Polymarket's portfolio total leads each profile, and per-market rows supply counts, distributions, and diagnostics on their own labeled basis. Open any wallet from 0xinsider.com/leaderboard or 0xinsider.com/polymarket, and read each number with its basis, not as a bare headline.
What a named basis means for rankings
A leaderboard ranked on a fragile basis inherits the fragility, and sorting on raw P&L lets a wallet with one lucky bet outrank a consistent one. Our grade still ranks mostly on realized profit, about 95% of it. But a wallet needs a deep sample of settled markets before it can reach S, A, or B, and the skill tie-breaker holds small samples back with Wilson lower bounds and shrinkage.
Profile metrics such as Sharpe ratio, profit factor, and drawdown are documented at 0xinsider.com/analytics, each on its own named basis.
Common questions
Why can Polymarket leaderboard P&L differ from independent accounting?
Because the two figures can use different accounting bases, scopes, and retrieval times. A large gap between two tools on the same wallet usually comes from counting different things, not from an error on either side. Ask which basis produced the number before treating it as the wallet's profit.
Can I sum a wallet's per-market profits to get its total P&L?
Not reliably. Merges, redeems, and maker rebates create portfolio effects that belong to no single market row. Our own retired per-market rollup overstated provider totals by 7 to 10 times and could flip the sign, which is why we treat per-market sums as diagnostics and take the account total from the provider.
What is mark-to-market P&L?
A daily series that revalues open positions at current prices each day, rather than counting only closed positions. It shows how a wallet's equity moved over time, including paper gains and losses that realized-cash accounting ignores.
How does 0xinsider compute trader P&L?
Realized P&L is Polymarket's net realized P&L, fees included, plus credited maker and taker rebates. Daily P&L is mark-to-market, and the full replayed equity curve is reconciled against the provider's total. The accounting rules are published at 0xinsider.com/transparency.
