Polymarket Order Flow Analysis

The whole 250ms archive tells one consistent story across asset families. In the August 23 event, five crypto markets hit lower bounds within 26 seconds, preceded by depth leaving and ask size multiplying. In the ETH cross-venue study, Polymarket printed its low in the same second as Binance — the book was already inverted.

At settlement, the same sequence: the winning side accumulates size at 0.99 before the final print while the losing side empties. Flow does not chase the move; it walks in first.

• Expansion — bid depth falls, ask depth rises; spread begins widening (measured ETH: bid -96%, ask ~+491% in one minute).
• Inversion — best bid crosses best ask or levels vanish around the mid (99.6-cent chasm case).
• Utterance — the price reprices; five markets did so in 26 seconds.
• Convergence — settlement side fills at 0.99/0.01 with 42,000+ share top-of-book.

• Compute imbalance at top-of-book and across the ladder at 250ms.
• Flag crossed rows through the recorded defect flag; they are the loudest flow events.
• Time-leading patterns: does bid depth fall N seconds before the mid moves? Measure the lead on your own data.
• Cross-venue flow: pair Polymarket books with recorded Binance spot for same-second checks (the measured ETH study pattern).

• From the tape, mark the direction of every fill against the resting-book side at that second; the flow-versus-book classification is the core of this page.
• Count buy-side versus sell-side shares per five-minute bucket and correlate the imbalance with the mid move on the next frame; flow imbalance that precedes reprices is the signal to chase.
• Reconcile the summed fills to the frame volume column for the window; the reconciliation is the flow analysis' blood test.
• Render the imbalance alongside the one-sided share and the median trade size; flow analysis without the size lens over-reads small fills.

Order flow is the tape's verdict on the ladder: who is taking which side, at what size, and how the resting book absorbs it — and on Polymarket the absorption is weak because resting size is thin and one-sided.

The measured venue facts make flow analysis quantitative: median trade 42,254 against shallow tops, fills that slip at reprice spikes, and flow that concentrates in the same second the reference moves — flow is the mechanism hidden behind every mid chart.

Flow analysis has one rule to keep it honest on this venue: never quote a flow metric without its size base. A share count means nothing next to a 42,254-share median, and the archive lets you publish imbalance, size, and depth together in one table.

The three metrics that describe flow on this venue without ambiguity are: trade count against the tape, contracts bought versus sold on the executable side, and the size base (median 42,254). Report all three with their window and the archive will reproduce them.

Flow analysis reads the tape against the book, and the archive stores both on one grid.

Sizes matter maximally on a thin venue: a flow number without the size lens misreads small fills as participation.

The reprice second is where flow and reference meet; join the tape to the reference on the UTC second and the analysis writes itself.

Flow is the tape against the book; this page is the analysis layer over the trade-history and bid-ask pages.

It feeds the slippage and market-making pages their quantity: who took which side and at what size.

The reprice second is its measuring stick, and the cross-market page shows the same second across families.

Flow is the tape reading the book, sized correctly against a thin venue.

Join the tape to the reference on the UTC second and the reprice second becomes readable.

• Order book data
• Price history
• Crypto data
• Provider matrix