Original | Odaily Planet Daily (@OdailyChina)

Author | Asher (@Asher_0210)

Recently, due to constant hints from Polymarket's official members regarding the POLY token, various yield farming communities have been analyzing the timing and scale of the POLY airdrop from different perspectives. According to predict.fun data, the probability of the event 'Polymarket will launch its official token before the end of this year' is currently at 56%; there's even a 7% chance that 'Polymarket will drop its official token before Q2 of this year.'

Moreover, in terms of market cap, the probability of the event 'Polymarket's FDV surpassing $6 billion a day after launch' is currently at 51%; there's a 34% chance that 'Polymarket's FDV will exceed $10 billion a day after launch.'

Polymarket's official token launch hint timeline.

October 2025: Initial hints and official confirmations regarding the POLY token.

Polymarket's official signals surrounding the POLY token can be traced back to last October.

On October 8, 2025, Polymarket CEO Shayne Coplan tweeted that POLY would be alongside BTC, ETH, BNB, and SOL, sparking speculation about Polymarket's token launch within the community. Although this wasn't an official token launch announcement, the fact that the founder personally mentioned $POLY was already sensitive enough. Following this, discussions around Polymarket's token began to heat up significantly.

Subsequently, the airdrop expectations were further brought into public discussion by official team members. On October 23, 2025, Polymarket's growth lead William LeGate mentioned 'prospective airdrop farmers' in a podcast or related discussions, acknowledging that user behavior and expectations surrounding Polymarket's airdrop indeed exist.

The real confirmation of the POLY token expectation came on October 24, 2025. Polymarket CMO Matthew Modabber clearly stated in a podcast, 'Polymarket will have a token, and there will be an airdrop.' This statement marked a key transition from community speculation to official confirmation regarding the Polymarket token.

Entering November, the official discussions shifted focus from whether there would be an airdrop to what actions would disqualify someone from receiving an airdrop. On November 11, 2025, William LeGate clearly stated in response to Sybil farming, 'I can tell you for sure that those bot accounts won't get any airdrop allocation; they're just wasting their time.'

This April: Major trading platforms launched preview pages for POLY.

Entering this April, the expectation for the POLY token has expanded to major crypto market websites.

Currently, both CoinGecko and CoinMarketCap have preview pages for Polymarket (POLY). Although these pages do not equate to a formal token issuance and do not represent an announced TGE date, the fact that external market platforms are reserving pages for $POLY further reinforces the community's expectations for Polymarket's token launch.

By this May: The expectation for the POLY token shifted from airdrop anticipation to product hints.

Entering May, discussions about the POLY token have further evolved to specific functionalities and airdrop eligibility.

On the evening of May 4, Polymarket team member Mustafa responded to questions about the POLY token during a community interaction. A user asked when they could stake POLY to reduce fees on trades or potential future order fees. Mustafa's reply was, 'Soon.' The community quickly interpreted this response as Polymarket preparing for the token launch.

On May 13, leads surrounding the POLY token continued to increase. Polymarket's product lead, Dustin Karp, posted a photo from his workspace, mentioning he passed by Mustafa's desk. In the photo, an internal page related to the POLY token airdrop was suspected to appear, and the community zoomed in to find an Airdrop tag, further boosting expectations for the POLY token airdrop.

Subsequently, Polymarket's growth lead LeGate also addressed questions about official badges in community discussions. LeGate stated the blue badge represents Polymarket employees; the Traders badge is primarily for traders who have accumulated profits of $100,000 or other high-volume users (in other tweets, he mentioned trading volume must exceed $10 million and indicated that if users are active on Polymarket, profit and trading volume could be slightly adjusted); the Builders badge is aimed at projects developed and built within the Polymarket ecosystem.

Badges may not be the only criteria for receiving an airdrop. The community asked if contributions on X would earn POLY token rewards, to which LeGate replied that linking the X account to the Polymarket account is just one-third of the conditions. Additionally, users may also need to include their Polymarket personal homepage link in their X profile and actively share their trades, profits, and market views on X to engage with the community.

Although this reply did not explicitly clarify whether 'mouth-feeding' users would genuinely receive an airdrop, various communities remain relatively optimistic, actively posting Polymarket-related content on X to attract potential token airdrops.

Personal strategy

As someone who's been heavily involved in the prediction market during the first half of this year, I still lean towards the idea that Polymarket won't drop any tokens before the World Cup.

The reason is simple: Polymarket's more pressing task now may not be to launch the token immediately, but to refine the trading experience and infrastructure first. Whether it's continuous optimization of the V2 version or even chain swaps, it's essentially to prepare for high-traffic, high-trade-frequency scenarios like the World Cup. For Polymarket, if the platform experience is unstable during the World Cup, even with an early token launch, it will be difficult to truly capture new users and trading volume.

Thus, recent trades are primarily focused on hedging, placing orders to farm points on predict.fun, and then hedging on Polymarket after taking positions. At the same time, participating in various events on Polymarket with profit as the goal. Additionally, I will link my personal X account information on Polymarket and publish content related to Polymarket on X, hoping that when the token is launched in the future, 'mouth-feeding users' will also receive a portion of the airdrop.