Why SharpRoster excludes market makers

We analyzed Polymarket’s public sports leaderboard and found that the top of the list was populated by market makers, not only by human handicappers. That leaderboard rewards profit and volume, so a high position can reflect a liquidity strategy rather than a repeatable view on games.

For a capper marketplace, that distinction matters. Bettors looking for a person to follow need to know whether a record represents decisions about sports markets or a different kind of trading activity.

SharpRoster classifies each fill directly from the exchange as maker or taker. A wallet is excluded from ranking when 30% or more of its fills are classified as market making. The record remains visible; it simply does not receive a rank that could be mistaken for evidence of handicapper skill.

The gate is one part of a larger eligibility system. History, deployed cost basis, and settled sample all matter too. A wallet that misses a gate is not declared bad; there is simply not enough comparable evidence for the ranked roster yet.

No. It means the product is answering a narrower question. SharpRoster is designed to help people discover sports cappers, so its primary ranking should compare records built from the kind of activity a follower believes they are evaluating. Market-making records can be valuable in another analysis, but combining them with directional handicappers would make the label less precise.

This is also why the public profile keeps the reason for an ineligible record visible. Exclusion is a classification, not a hidden deletion.

The methodology page publishes every eligibility gate, the dual-return ranking formula, the closing line value definition, and the limitations of the data.