How to read the Nimb map

On Nimb, the map is a living picture of Polymarket: each filled circle is a market, its area follows the money traded over the chosen timeframe, and its colour is the category. Grey discs are public wallets, green and red lines are the positions they hold, and dashed lines join markets of the same theme. It is where market reading starts.

Market reading is working out what a prediction market's price, flow and holders say about an event, and how much to trust it. The map does the first pass for you: it shows where the money is, what moved and who is positioned, before you open a single market. This page explains every mark on it, so you can read the Nimb map without a legend.

What does every mark on the map mean?

Why are some circles bigger?

Size is money. A circle's area follows the dollar volume traded on that market, summed over all its outcomes, over the timeframe you chose, from the last hour (1H) to the last 30 days (30D). The radius grows with the square root of volume, so the area grows in step with the money: twice the money looks twice as big, not four times as big. The largest market on screen sets the largest circle, so sizes compare markets with each other, not with a fixed dollar amount.

Two details keep the picture honest. First, every circle has a minimum radius, so a market with very little volume still shows as a small dot you can click; near that floor the area is no longer exactly proportional. Second, size is volume only. An earlier version took the larger of volume and a quarter of the value held by top holders, and Nimb's own tests found the holder term decided the size for 84% of circles on 24H. Sizing now follows traded volume alone.

Volume is not the same as open interest: a big circle means a lot of trading, not necessarily a lot of money still at stake. See volume and open interest.

What do the colours mean?

Colour is category, and only category. Each market gets one of seven colours, and markets of the same category sit near each other, with the biggest category in the middle of the screen.

Dark mode uses slightly brighter versions of the same hues so they keep their contrast. Colour never encodes direction: a red circle is a Geopolitics market, not a market that fell. How markets are sorted into categories is on the categories page; the full palette is in the design system.

What are the green and red lines?

Lines are positions. Each grey disc is a public wallet that ranks among the top holders of at least one market on the map, and each line runs from that wallet to a market it holds. Green (#3FAF76) means the wallet holds Yes; red (#E9473A) means it holds No. Green and red mean Yes and No and nothing else on the map. A thicker line is a larger position.

Wallets that hold both Yes and No in the same market are netted first: only the side they are net long is drawn, and fully hedged pairs are left out, because a locked Yes-plus-No set is not a bet. Wallets spread over many markets behave like market makers and are kept off the map, though they still appear in the holder tables. Both rules are explained in top holders and wallet lines and net exposure and hedged positions.

Wallets drift towards the categories they hold, so a wallet that holds only Politics markets sits among the blue circles, and a wallet that holds across categories sits between them.

What are the dashed lines?

Dashed lines are themes, never money. When you hover over or select a market that belongs to a theme, such as "Bitcoin & ETH" or "US midterms", dashed arcs join it to the other markets of that theme on screen, and the theme's name appears above them. The lines carry no dollar amount and no strength of relation: they say "same story", not "moves together". What a theme can and cannot tell you is on the themes and factors page.

What happens when I hover over or select a market?

Focus dims, it does not hide. When you hover over or select a market, everything connected to it stays at full strength: its holders, their lines, the other markets those holders hold, and the markets of its theme. Everything else fades to between 12% and 25% opacity, so you keep the context of the whole map while you read one part of it. Lines that do not touch the focused market drop almost to nothing.

Hovering shows a card with the market's reading, its top holders and a line on money traded. Clicking opens the market panel on the right, with the full analysis and the order ticket. Clicking a wallet does the same for that wallet: its positions, entry and current prices, and unrealised P&L. Click empty space or press Escape to close.

Why does the map move?

Three kinds of motion, each with a reason:

• Drift. Every circle moves on a slow orbit of its own. Markets moving more in price drift a little more. It is there so the map reads as live, not as a chart.
• Size changes. Prices stream live from Polymarket's order book over a WebSocket, and volumes refresh every minute from the Gamma API. When volume changes, circles grow or shrink smoothly rather than jumping.
• New markets. The list of markets refreshes every 5 minutes in the app. When a newer list is out, Nimb offers "New trending markets · Update" instead of reshuffling the map under your cursor.

Circles never pass under the search bar or the dock: they slow down and stop at the edges. If your system asks for reduced motion, Nimb turns off drift, pulses and entrance animations. Freshness for each data source is listed on data sources and freshness.

How do I navigate the map: dock, search and share links?

Everything lives in the dock at the bottom of the screen:

The search bar at the top searches markets, outcomes and themes; choosing a result zooms to that market and opens it. The Nimb logo in the search bar takes you back to the full map with all filters cleared. You can zoom from 1× to 6× with a scroll or a pinch; text keeps the same size while circles grow, so more titles fit as you zoom in.

Share links open a market directly. A link of the form /#m=<slug>, where the slug is the market's Polymarket event slug, opens the map with that market selected. If the market is not on the current timeframe, Nimb switches to one where it is (7D first, then 24H, then 30D). The "Open on the map" links on the market pages use the same format.

What can the map not tell you?

The map shows where money traded and who holds the largest public positions. It does not show whether a price is right, why a market moved, or what holders know. A big circle can be one large trader turning over the same position; a cluster of green lines can be a few related wallets. The map shows 110 markets per timeframe out of the thousands on Polymarket, chosen by the rules in market selection. Treat it as the first step of a reading, not the reading itself.

From reading to execution

Open a market from the map to read its price, chart, flow and holders in the panel, then use the order ticket beside it if you decide to act. The workflow is described in read and execute.

Last reviewed 2026-11-07 · Data from Polymarket · Not financial advice · Nimb is not affiliated with Polymarket.