How Markets Resolve

A market resolves when its outcome is known and Polymarket applies that market's own written rules to decide which side won. Winning shares pay $1.00 each, losing shares pay $0, and the proceeds credit your Polymarket balance automatically. There is nothing to claim on Polycopy, and Polycopy charges no fee at resolution.

Every market carries a rules section that defines exactly what counts as YES, what counts as NO, which source decides, and what happens in the awkward cases. That text is the contract. It is not a restatement of the title, and the two can differ in ways that cost money. A market titled around a bill passing in June might resolve on the date of signature rather than the vote, or name one chamber rather than both, or set a cutoff in a specific timezone.

This matters more when you are copying than when the idea is your own. The trader you are copying read those rules, or at least had a view about them. You inherit their reading along with their position.

Each market names its source. An official result, a government release, a named publication, an exchange print. Resolution follows that source rather than general consensus or what everyone watching already knows. When the named source is slow, the market is slow, even if the answer looks obvious.

There is a gap between an event finishing and a market paying out. Sometimes it is minutes. Sometimes the official source publishes the next morning, or a result is provisional for a day, or the market waits out a confirmation window written into its own rules. A position that looks obviously won can sit unresolved for a while, and that is normal rather than a fault.

A copied position is your position. It sits in your Polymarket account under your own wallet, and it resolves whether or not the bot that placed it is still running, whether or not you still follow that trader, and whether or not your Premium subscription is active. Stopping a bot sells nothing and changes nothing about resolution.

Inside a bot, the capital tied up in a resolved position frees up again and becomes available for the next copies, within the limits you set. You do not need to move money back or restart anything.

Polymarket runs a process for contested resolutions. If the correct outcome is genuinely unclear, or a source is ambiguous, or somebody challenges the proposed answer, a market can be held while that is worked through. It delays payout and occasionally changes the answer. That process is Polymarket's, under Polymarket's rules, and it is worth reading before you hold a position into a close call. See Polymarket's help center.