Robin Markets said it will gradually shut down V1, saying its first yield product did not reach the adoption level the team had expected. The protocol plans to retire the initial version and relaunch with improvements.
The team said the points program, yield guarantee and matching rewards will end alongside V1. Those mechanisms were introduced to incentivize liquidity, but they did not perform as intended. Existing products will continue to run until a new version goes live before the end of this year.
Two issues behind the V1 shutdown
The first issue, according to the team, was position matching. V1 required opposite YES and NO positions to be matched within market pools before capital could be combined into USDC and put to work. That meant capital efficiency depended on whether the two sides were distributed in a relatively balanced way.
The design created a first-mover disadvantage. Tokens deposited early often sat idle until counterparties appeared, and when pools were thin, the earliest users frequently failed to earn yield.
The second issue was a change in the yield environment. The team said that when the project launched, USDC.e yields on Polygon were still relatively attractive, and Robin Markets was working with Yearn. After 10/10, more yield venues on Polygon either contracted or lost competitiveness. That weakened the protocol’s original yield sources and increased pressure on its subsidized guarantee.
Robin Markets said weak matching and softer yields reinforced each other and made the product harder to operate in practice.
Project positioning and next steps
Robin Markets describes itself as a capital-efficiency layer for prediction markets. Users can stake Polymarket outcome tokens on Polygon and earn yield while keeping their original market exposure.
Public information shows the project previously raised $475,000 in an angel round. Backers included Fabric VC, Animoca Brands, ATKA Incubator, John Lilic, Stefan D. George, and angel investors from Hilbert Capital and LayerZero, among others.
The team said the next version will directly address the matching mechanism and yield-source issues.
