Polymarket TWAP Settlement Guide
Everything a polymarket twap trading bot developer needs to know about the August 7, 2026 cutover from snapshot settlement to time-weighted average price (TWAP).
What changed on August 7, 2026
Polymarket crypto Up/Down markets moved from single-price-snapshot settlement to TWAP settlement. Instead of one oracle tick at expiry, settlement uses a running average over a defined window fed by Chainlink's TWAP oracle via Real-Time Data Streaming (RTDS).
Window lengths by contract
| Contract type | TWAP window | Oracle topic |
|---|---|---|
| 5-minute Up/Down | 30 seconds | prices.crypto.chainlink.twap |
| 15-minute Up/Down | 60 seconds | prices.crypto.chainlink.twap |
| 4-hour Up/Down | 60 seconds | prices.crypto.chainlink.twap |
Why snapshot bots fail
Most legacy Polymarket trading bots react to the current spot price or a single terminal tick. Under TWAP, the settlement target is a trajectory — a short average built from many oracle samples. A signal tuned for point-in-time accuracy may be wrong for averaged settlement.
- Settlement = average of many samples, not one tick
- Edge comes from forecasting the projected final average inside the window
- Oracle feed staleness can silently corrupt decisions without explicit guards
- Each contract type needs its own window state machine
Chainlink RTDS feed
Connect to Polymarket's real-time data stream:
See the official Polymarket Chainlink TWAP documentation for event schemas and subscription examples.
What this bot does differently
- Per-contract window tracking — isolated state for 5m / 15m / 4h
- Projected-average forecasting — gates trades on projected final TWAP
- Staleness detection — skips windows when feed lag exceeds threshold
- Window-aware reconnects — faster retry during active windows
- Rate-limit budgeting — protects execution during peak volatility