Polymarket rolls out V2 and pUSD collateral, targeting November 2

Polymarket began rolling out V2 of its trading contracts on October 6, The Block reported. V2 keeps every position in one ERC-1155 contract and settles in a new collateral token, pUSD. Canary markets, a limited live test, run through October 30, with a tentative switch for new markets on November 2. pUSD is not the POLY token.

What V2 changes under the hood

V2 holds every position in a single ERC-1155 contract, a standard that lets one contract manage many token types. In a binary market, a share of the winning outcome pays $1, and each share is one of these tokens. Polymarket's contract documentation says each position ID encodes which module owns the position, which market it belongs to and which outcome it represents. Three modules cover binary markets, the multi-outcome markets the documentation calls neg-risk, and combinatorial markets.

The collateral is pUSD, short for Polymarket USD. The documentation describes an ERC-20 token with six decimals that wraps USDC or USDC.e one to one through a vault. It states that the vault must always hold at least as much as pUSD in circulation.

Anyone can wrap and unwrap through public onramp and offramp contracts, which an admin can pause asset by asset. A third contract, PermissionedRamp, requires a co-signature from an authorized witness for every wrap or unwrap. The repository does not say when that gate applies.

The six firms The Block named as auditors all appear in the repository's audit folder, which holds 18 reports in total. Later reports cover the oracle and combinatorial modules.

Dates, and where the sources differ

The Block gave two dates: canary markets run through October 30, and a tentative switch to V2 for net-new markets comes on November 2. We found no second source for either date, and Polymarket's documentation site would not load for us. Treat both as reported, not confirmed.

The sources also differ on how far along V2 is. Crypto Briefing wrote on October 7 that Polymarket had moved to V2 ahead of the Token2049 conference. The Block describes a staged start in which only canary markets are live. We follow The Block because it gives dates.

Holders of older positions have a path. The repository's migration document describes a self-service function that moves legacy Conditional Tokens and NegRiskAdapter positions into V2. The Block's report gives no deadline for that step, and we found no user-facing guide.

What it changes for the POLY airdrop

Nothing in the V2 materials mentions an airdrop, a snapshot or a POLY token. Our Polymarket tracker page rates the airdrop as confirmed on the strength of one statement, the CMO's in October 2025, and V2 adds no criteria to it.

At Token2049 in Singapore on October 7, CEO Shayne Coplan said Polymarket is exploring an onchain asset with programmable utility tied to its economy, Crypto Briefing reported. He announced no token. Cointelegraph reported that he also called the chase for 100x tokens a game of irrational exuberance.

Two practical points follow.

• pUSD and POLY are different assets. pUSD is a dollar wrapper. POLY, if it launches, would be separate. Drainer pages will use both names, so a signature request for a pUSD or POLY claim from anywhere but Polymarket's verified channels is a red flag. Our scam checklist covers the signs.

• Activity now spans two contract generations. Positions live under new token IDs in V2. Our reading is that any future criteria based on onchain activity would have to read both generations. That is an inference, not a Polymarket statement, and it says nothing about who would qualify.

What to watch:

• October 30, when canary markets end, per The Block.
• November 2, the tentative switch for new markets.
• Any Polymarket post with POLY criteria, a snapshot date or tokenomics. None exists as of October 7.

Nothing here is trading advice. For the perps launch that preceded V2, see our September note.