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PolyQuantLab covers Polymarket’s crypto Up/Down binary markets — the markets whose event_type is one of 5m · 15m · 1h · 4h · daily_up_down.

Event types

event_typeDurationResolution boundary
5m5 minutesevery :00, :05, :10 …
15m15 minutesevery :00, :15, :30, :45
1h1 hourevery :00
4h4 hoursevery 4-hour boundary
daily_up_down1 daymidnight UTC
Each market resolves Up if the underlying’s price at the resolution boundary is above the strike price; Down otherwise. Strike is the underlying price at the market open boundary (see Strike price).

YES / NO tokens

Each market trades two tokens on the Polymarket CLOB:
  • YES — pays out 1ifthemarketresolvesUp,1 if the market resolves **Up**, 0 otherwise.
  • NO — pays out 1ifthemarketresolvesDown,1 if the market resolves **Down**, 0 otherwise.
yes_ask + no_ask should be ≥ 1atanypointintime.Whenitdropsbelow1 at any point in time. When it drops below 1 — even by a few cents — there’s a logical arb on the table: buy both sides, collect the deterministic payoff at resolution.

Strike price

The strike is the underlying’s spot price at the market’s open boundary, not its close. Markets are published 12–24 hours before they open (so users can pre-trade), which means the strike isn’t defined until the open boundary passes. The API computes strike as follows:
strike = (first Binance spot tick at or after resolution_at - duration)
This is the canonical strike for backtest correctness — using the publish-time price would be off by hours of drift.

Tickers

Three crypto underlyings:
tickerBinance symbolChainlink aggregator (Polygon)
BTCBTCUSDT0xc907E116054Ad103354f2D350FD2514433D57F6f
ETHETHUSDT0xF9680D99D6C9589e2a93a78A04A279e509205945
SOLSOLUSDT0x10C8264C0935b3B9870013e057f330Ff3e9C56dC
Endpoints accept the ticker form (BTC), not the symbol.

Resolution outcome

When a market resolves, Polymarket publishes a resolution_outcome string. We normalise to "Up" / "Down":
Polymarket textNormalisedYES payoutNO payout
starts with upUp$1$0
starts with downDown$0$1
anything elseleft raw
A non- resolution means the market was disputed or N/A — see Resolution risk modeling.