Polymarket Wallets and Deposits: Deposit Wallets, Bridges and Withdrawals

A Polymarket balance is not an account entry at a broker. It is a smart wallet on Polygon that holds pUSD and ERC-1155 outcome tokens. New accounts deployed on or after May 4, 2026 use a Deposit Wallet. Older accounts use a Proxy Wallet, created through Magic Link or Google login, or a Safe Wallet, created with an external signer such as MetaMask or Rabby. The distinction matters when you export keys, connect an API, or try to recover funds.

The wallet address is the address you fund. The signer is the key that authorizes trades. They are often different addresses, and confusing them is the most common self-inflicted loss in onchain trading.

Three wallet types and what changed

A Deposit Wallet is the default for new accounts. It executes one or more contract calls as an ordered batch, validates orders through ERC-1271, and is submitted gaslessly by Polymarket's relayer. The wallet owner signs the batch; the relayer pays the Polygon gas. That is why a new user can approve tokens, split pUSD, and trade without holding POL.

A Proxy Wallet is a legacy smart wallet tied to a Magic Link or Google login. A Safe Wallet is a legacy smart wallet controlled by an external signer. Both remain supported, and both can continue to trade through the CLOB. An allowlisted EOA is also possible; it trades directly from the signer address and must hold POL for every onchain action, including approvals, transfers, splits, merges and redemptions.

Deposit Wallets deployed after June 29, 2026 use an ERC-1967 beacon proxy. The shared beacon lets Polymarket upgrade the implementation without changing your wallet address. An owner can pause the wallet, wait out the factory timelock, call optOut and pin the current implementation, then unpause. That buys immutability but forfeits future security fixes and features delivered through beacon upgrades. It is a real trade-off, not a formality.

Deposit Wallet owners can also authorize a separate signer with scoped, time-limited trading access through session keys. That is useful for an API bot: the bot gets a signer that can trade but cannot drain the wallet or change ownership, so the owner key can stay offline.

Deposits: one address per chain family

Polymarket's Bridge API generates deposit addresses for your Polymarket wallet. A request to the deposit endpoint returns four addresses: evm for Ethereum, Arbitrum, Base, Optimism and other EVM chains; svm for Solana; btc for Bitcoin; and tron for Tron. You send assets from the matching chain to the matching address, and the bridge converts them to pUSD on Polygon.

The supported list is broad. It includes Ethereum, Polygon, Arbitrum, Base, Optimism, BNB Smart Chain, Solana, Bitcoin, Tron, HyperEVM, Abstract, Monad, Ethereal, Katana and Lighter. Example tokens include ETH, USDC, USDT, DAI, WBTC, SOL and BTC, depending on the chain. Minimums are $2 on most L2s, $7 on Ethereum, and $9 on Bitcoin and Tron. The list and the minimums change, so query the supported-assets endpoint before sending anything.

USDC and USDC.e are both accepted as source assets. Either way, the incoming stablecoin is wrapped into pUSD through the Collateral Onramp, and pUSD is what you hold and trade with. Polymarket does not charge a deposit fee, but the bridge quote can include a provider or swap cost, and the source-chain transaction costs gas in the source chain's native token.

A worked example: you have $5,000 of USDC on Base. You request bridge addresses, send the USDC to the evm address, pay Base gas, and receive pUSD on Polygon. The minimum is $2, so the size is fine. If the quote shows a 20 basis point cost, you receive about $4,990 of pUSD before any price movement. If you instead send to the svm address from an EVM wallet, or send a token that is not on the supported list, the funds may not be recoverable. Polymarket points users to recovery.polymarket.com for wrong-token cases, but the docs warn that unsupported tokens can cause irrecoverable loss.

For deposits over $50,000 from a chain other than Polygon, the documentation recommends a third-party bridge such as DeBridge, Across or Portal to reduce slippage. Polymarket states that it is not affiliated with those bridges and is not responsible for them, which is another way of saying the counterparty risk is yours.

Withdrawals: free, but not always instant

A withdrawal goes the other way. You specify a destination chain, token and recipient, and the bridge returns addresses configured for that destination. You send pUSD from your Polymarket wallet to the evm address, and the bridge unwraps and swaps it. Do not pre-generate withdrawal addresses: each one is configured for a specific destination, so generating early and reusing later is a good way to send funds to the wrong place.

The mechanics have a bottleneck. pUSD is unwrapped to USDC through the Collateral Offramp and swapped through a Uniswap v3 pool for native USDC. The interface enforces less than a 10 basis point difference in output, which protects against a bad fill but does not guarantee liquidity. At times the pool can be exhausted. If a withdrawal stalls, the docs suggest breaking it into smaller amounts or waiting for the pool to rebalance. Withdrawing pUSD directly avoids the Uniswap step, but some exchanges no longer accept pUSD deposits, so check the destination before choosing that route.

Polymarket does not charge a withdrawal fee. The costs are the swap spread, the destination chain's gas, and any provider fee shown in the quote. For withdrawals over $50,000, split the amount or use an external bridge; a single large order can move the pool and worsen the rate.

Operational risks

• Wrong chain or wrong token. The four address types are not interchangeable. A deposit sent to the wrong family may be unrecoverable.
• Address poisoning and phishing. Verify the full address, not the first and last characters. Bookmark the official app rather than following links.
• Lost keys. If you lose the signer key for a Safe or EOA, no one can restore it. Magic Link and proxy accounts may have a recovery path through Polymarket, but it is not a general backstop.
• Smart-wallet upgrades. Beacon upgrades can change wallet behavior. Opting out protects against a bad upgrade but also cuts you off from fixes.
• API key scope. A relayer or builder key can authorize gasless wallet operations. Keep secrets server-side; a leaked key is a wallet-level risk, not just an API nuisance.
• Access restrictions. A close-only jurisdiction lets you close positions but not open new ones. OFAC-sanctioned jurisdictions block even closing. Check the geoblock endpoint before depending on an exit.
• No deposit insurance. There is no FDIC or SIPC backstop. pUSD is a stablecoin claim, not a bank deposit.

Record-keeping

Everything settles on Polygon, so the account wallet address is the audit trail. Export activity from the Data API v2 activity and positions endpoints, and reconcile it with bridge transactions, trade fills, splits, merges, redemptions and rebate payments. The bridge status endpoint gives you a transaction record for each deposit or withdrawal. The rebates endpoint gives you maker rebate amounts by date and market.

Keep three identifiers together: the account wallet address, the signer address, and the wallet type. If you rotate signers or migrate from a Proxy Wallet to a Deposit Wallet, label both in your records; otherwise a later reconciliation will look like a missing transfer. UI profit-and-loss figures can include unrealized gains and change with the mark, so snapshot the date and the position status rather than relying on a single number.

This is bookkeeping, not tax advice. The point is to have a complete transaction trail before you need it, because the onchain record is permanent but your ability to reconstruct it from memory is not.