Polymarket Cuts Staff and Moves Its V2 Market Switch to November 23

Polymarket, the blockchain-based prediction market, confirmed on November 11, 2026 that it has laid off staff and ended a number of contractor agreements as part of a reorganization. In the same week it rescheduled the move of new markets onto its rebuilt Protocol V2 smart contracts into three waves, starting November 23. As of the evening of November 11, every newly created Polymarket market we checked, crypto contracts included, still ran on the old v1 system.

The figures

Item	Figure	Source	Date
Contractor agreements ended	effective Nov 4, 2026; number not disclosed	Front Office Sports	Nov 11, 2026
Protocol V2 waves for new markets	Nov 23, Nov 24, Dec 1, 2026	TokenPost	Nov 11, 2026
Earlier tentative V2 date	Nov 2, 2026	The Block	Oct 6, 2026
Newest 2,000 open markets on v1	2,000 of 2,000	Polymarket Gamma API	Nov 11, 2026
Polymarket annualized revenue	over $1.8 billion	Front Office Sports, citing CNBC	Nov 10, 2026
Q3 2026 prediction-market volume share	Kalshi 73%, Polymarket about 18%	Front Office Sports, citing Predicted	Nov 11, 2026

What did Polymarket cut?

An email told contractors their agreements would end effective November 4 as part of a "company-wide reduction in force," Front Office Sports reported. Full-time employees did not receive that email, but some were laid off. Workers who posted about losing their jobs worked in creative, growth, video and marketing roles, and one source said marketing was "heavily reorganized." Viral posts on November 4 and November 7 claimed about 30% of staff had been cut; sources told Front Office Sports those figures were inaccurate. Polymarket declined to give its headcount or the number of contractors affected.

The company confirmed the email was authentic and the changes were part of a restructuring, Investing.com reported. A spokesperson said: "As we've grown and brought on new leadership, we've reorganized to set the company up for its next phase of growth."

That new leadership includes Travis VanderZanden, formerly of Uber, as chief growth officer after Polymarket fired its chief marketing officer in October, and Warren Jenson, formerly of Amazon, as its first chief financial officer in September, per Front Office Sports. Two sources told the outlet the company is "professionalizing" ahead of a possible listing as soon as 2027.

What is Protocol V2, and when does it start?

Protocol V2 is the second half of a rebuild that began in April. Polymarket's trading engine and its pUSD collateral token, "a standard ERC-20 on Polygon backed by USDC," went live on April 28, 2026, according to its migration documentation.

The protocol layer was announced on October 5 by Polymarket protocol lead Rajath Alex, The Block reported. For new markets it replaces the 2019 Gnosis Conditional Tokens framework with:

• a single ERC-1155 contract for all positions, with pUSD as the only collateral;
• one exchange per market type, covering binary, two kinds of neg-risk (multi-outcome) markets and combinatorial markets;
• an OracleAggregator that can resolve markets through UMA, Chainlink and other data sources;
• provisions for moving positions and collateral across chains, which Polymarket says it will switch on when it expands beyond Polygon.

The code was audited by Cantina, Certora, Quantstamp, SigmaPrime, Zellic and Pashov, with a bug bounty of up to $5 million. The Block reported a canary period on live markets through October 30 and a tentative switch for all net-new markets on November 2.

That date did not hold. Polymarket's developers have replaced it with three waves of V2 market launches on November 23, November 24 and December 1, TokenPost reported on November 11, and told market makers and integrators to check the scheduled time for each affected market. The report did not say which market categories fall in which wave or why the November 2 date moved.

What changes for crypto traders?

Little, for positions already open. Existing positions will not be converted to V2 and stay on the current system, and app and website users need no technical steps, though they may be asked to approve new contracts when trading, Cointelegraph reported from Polymarket's migration guide. Polymarket's 2026 bitcoin and ether ladders, which settle on December 31 and feed our cross-venue comparisons, are v1 markets, so on that guidance they stay on the system they were created on.

The change matters most for crypto because crypto produces the most new markets. We pulled the 2,000 most recently created open markets from Polymarket's Gamma API at 5:27 p.m. ET on November 11. All 2,000 had been created between 3:30 p.m. and 5:25 p.m. ET that day, all reported version: v1, and 270 were up/down contracts on bitcoin, ether, solana, XRP, BNB, dogecoin, Hyperliquid's token and zcash. That short-duration format drove most of the record $2.7 billion crypto week on Kalshi and Polymarket in October, Crypto Briefing reported. Polymarket's stated plan, per The Block, is for net-new markets to be created on V2, which would put these contracts on the new system once the waves are complete.

The oracle layer is the part crypto traders will notice. Polymarket's up/down contracts already settle on a Chainlink time-weighted average price, Crypto Briefing reported in August, and the OracleAggregator lets a market's resolution source be set per market type. The Block's report did not say which oracle each crypto market type will use under V2.

Where does this leave Polymarket against Kalshi?

Polymarket trails on volume while its revenue grows. Kalshi had 73% of prediction-market volume in the third quarter and Polymarket about 18%, according to a Predicted report cited by Front Office Sports. Polymarket told CNBC on November 10 that its annualized revenue had passed $1.8 billion, up from a run rate above $1 billion in June, and credits its US exchange, relaunched in December 2025. A $1 billion funding round led by 1789 Capital was reported to be near completion at a valuation of about $21 billion, per Front Office Sports. Kalshi closed a $1 billion round in October at a $40 billion valuation, crypto.news reported.

What is the CFTC looking at?

Both venues face questions in Washington this week. The CFTC is examining whether Polymarket complied with restrictions from its January 2022 settlement, which carried a $1.4 million civil penalty, including its offshore geographic restrictions and whether US users could reach the international platform, crypto.news reported, citing a November 10 POLITICO report. No decision has been announced. The same report said the CFTC warned Kalshi it could face charges over how it notified regulators about proposed contracts; Kalshi spokesperson Elisabeth Diana called it "a procedural error involving the submission of a handful of contracts, many of which weren't live."

What to watch

• November 23 and 24: the first two waves of new markets on Protocol V2. The version field in Polymarket's market data is the simplest check of which system a market runs on.
• December 1: the third wave, a month before Polymarket's 2026 crypto ladders settle.
• The CFTC: any action on the Polymarket review or a settlement with Kalshi.