The problem PolyTrade solves

Current betting market participants face several challenges:

• Missed Opportunities — Arbitrage chances often vanish within seconds due to slow detection or manual execution.
• High Manual Effort — Scanning multiple markets and calculating arbitrage manually is time-consuming and prone to human error.
• Inefficient Execution — Without automation, by the time a bet is placed, odds may have shifted unfavorably.
• Fragmented Data Sources — Bettors must track multiple sportsbooks and exchanges, each with different interfaces and latency.
• Risk of Loss — Small calculation errors or delays can turn a sure win into a loss.

With this solution, users can:
Automatically detect arbitrage across multiple sportsbooks in real time.

Challenges we ran into

One major hurdle was categorizing and identifying terms used by different prediction market platforms like Polymarket and Kalshi.

• Inconsistent Terminology — The same concept (e.g., market resolution, contract expiry) is described differently on each platform.
• Ambiguous Data Fields — Certain terms were vague or platform-specific, requiring manual mapping to standard definitions.
• Complex Parsing Logic — Handling nested JSON structures and differing API formats slowed down integration.

How I Solved It:

• Built a term-mapping dictionary to unify similar concepts under a common schema.
• Created parsing functions for each platform’s API to normalize data before analysis.