Use case · Trading

Cross-venue arbitrage

The same real-world event often trades at different prices on different prediction markets. polybot lets you capture that spread with one position model spanning Polymarket, Kalshi and Opinion.

The opportunity

When a Polymarket contract on an event trades at 0.62 YES while the equivalent Kalshi contract implies 0.58, there is a spread to capture. The classic single-venue version — buy YES and NO for a combined price below $1 — is handled by the built-in arbitrage strategy. Across venues, the logic is similar but the plumbing is harder: two order lifecycles, two settlement models, two fee schedules.

How polybot helps

• Unified positions. Legs on different venues are tracked as one net exposure, not two disconnected trades.
• Venue abstraction. The BaseVenue interface hides Polymarket's on-chain CLOB and Kalshi's REST semantics behind one order path — see Polymarket vs Kalshi.
• Risk as an invariant. Global and per-venue caps are enforced before either leg is submitted, so a wide fill can't blow past your limits.
• Shadow first. Prove the strategy in paper mode against live prices before promoting it to live.

Getting started

Enable the arbitrage strategy in shadow, connect the venues you want in .env, and watch fills accumulate on the dashboard. See the architecture for how orders are routed and reconciled, or the statistical arbitrage strategy for the correlated-market variant.

FAQ

How does polybot net exposure across venues?

Positions from Polymarket, Kalshi and Opinion share one position model, so an arbitrage that is long YES on one venue and long NO on another is tracked as a single net exposure — and evaluated against your global caps as one.

Is cross-venue arbitrage risk-free?

No. Combined-price arbitrage is near-risk-free only if sized and executed cleanly; leg risk, fees, gas, resolution timing and venue-specific settlement all matter. polybot enforces caps and shadow-tests the strategy first, but does not remove market risk.