Polymarket, a leading prediction market platform, experienced a significant outage on December 18-19, 2025, following technical issues on the Polygon Proof-of-Stake (PoS) network and a broader Cloudflare disruption. The platform went offline for a short period, with users encountering an error message prompting them to reload the page.
Downdetector logged a sharp spike in problem reports, with 86% of users flagging website issues, 11% reporting login troubles, and 3% noting "website test not starting." The surge triggered an incident alert as report volumes rose far above normal levels. Service was later restored, with key functions resuming.
The outage was linked to a dual cause: a technical bug on Polygon PoS and a major Cloudflare disruption affecting routing and content delivery across multiple regions. Polygon's update described a bug that affected some nodes and reduced RPC (Remote Procedure Call) availability across several providers. The disruption primarily hit Bor, Polygon's block-producing and transaction execution layer. While the block producer kept running and the chain remained live, multiple nodes stalled, weakening RPC access. Polygon engineers quickly found the bug and shipped a patch, restoring full functionality as validators continued syncing and the network rebuilt toward quorum.
This incident follows earlier network stability issues. On December 12, Polygon noted some transactions appeared stuck or missing, advising users to resubmit with a gas price at least 10% higher. A fix was implemented on December 13. A similar episode in September delayed block finality by several minutes for some Bor and Erigon nodes.
In response, a Polymarket team member named Mustafa stated in an official Discord message that developing a custom Layer 2 (L2) solution is now the team's "#1" priority. The aim is to gain more control over infrastructure, reduce exposure to external network failures, and ensure platform stability. The message, intended to calm users, included no specific plan details or timeline. The Discord chatter also tied the potential L2 work to long-running discussions around a $POLY token and a possible airdrop.
