I took apart the winners across three sports categories: screen on lifetime profit, then match every fill to its kickoff time and settlement result, attributing P&L by period and by side. The most valuable finding was not among the winners — it was three wallets the leaderboards had elevated that were, lifetime, heavily negative. One of them by nearly four million dollars.
Before taking anything apart I did one thing: check each candidate's lifetime profit. It removed three names from near the top:
| Apparent standing | Lifetime reality |
|---|---|
| 8th on the maker-rebate table, $254k of rebates collected, $545–3,739 a day | lifetime −$3,911,925 |
| A "model maker" whose rebate reconciliation matched exactly | lifetime −$254,149 |
| Daily leaderboard +$60k | lifetime −$337,175 |
That wallet collected $254k of maker rebates — eighth on the table, $545–3,739 a day. Anybody seeing it would want to copy it.
It is down three point nine million dollars lifetime.
The rebate table measures volume, not profit. A player optimising for rebates is buying that volume with larger trading losses — $254k of rebates bought a $3.9M hole.
In one linerebates are a consolation prize, not a business model.
| Screen on | You select |
|---|---|
| Daily / weekly profit | the highest-variance players |
| Maker rebate table | the highest-volume players |
| Lifetime profit | a defensible starting point |
This is a separate problem from leaderboards being lagging indicators: that one is about time (July's star is dead by August), this one is about basis (the board is not measuring what you think). Defend against both.
After cleaning, fifteen genuine lifetime winners remained across tennis, MLB and CS. Arranged by whether they trade before or after kickoff, the shape is unmistakable:
| Wallet | Sport | Lifetime | In-play share | Two-sided rate | Pregame ¢/share |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| A | tennis | $1,749k | 4.6% | 0.0% | +20.8¢ |
| B | tennis | $1,517k | 14.5% | 28.0% | +18.6¢ |
| C | MLB | $568k | 32.4% | 3.0% | +18.5¢ |
| D | MLB | $41k | 14.1% | 0.6% | +14.0¢ |
| E | CS | $184k | 17.3% | 0.5% | +12.5¢ |
| —— above: pregame-dominant, almost never pairing —— | |||||
| F | MLB | $1,685k | 87.5% | 63.7% | −18.9¢ |
| G | MLB | $1,440k | 74.3% | 58.4% | +39.0¢ |
| H | CS | $118k | 72.1% | 43.2% | −1.6¢ |
| —— above: in-play dominant, heavily paired —— | |||||
| I | tennis | $116k | 0% | 38.2% | −3.0¢ |
| J | MLB | $356k | 0% | 31.6% | −2.4¢ |
Basiswallet names are anonymised and no identity attribution is made; the data comes from each wallet's public on-chain activity. Lifetime profit is the leaderboard's lifetime figure; per-share margin is attributed by settlement result and counts settled fills only.
The first five have two-sided rates of 0.0% / 28% / 3.0% / 0.6% / 0.5% — they essentially never pair. Their method is pick a side, buy, hold to settlement, with sales close to zero.
And their pregame margin is +12.5 to +20.8 cents a share. That magnitude cannot come from spread capture — spread capture is a fraction-of-a-cent business. Twelve to twenty cents can only come from one thing: being more accurate than the market.
The highest two-sided pregame traders (I and J, at 31–38%) have pregame margins of −3.0¢ and −2.4¢ — only breaking even on rebates.
And remember these were selected from the lifetime winners. The losers running the same style are the three reversals in §1.
F has a lifetime of $1,685k and a pregame margin of −18.9¢ — it loses money before kickoff and makes all of it after. The group's signature is in-play share of 72–88%, two-sided rate 43–76%, thin margins on enormous volume (one of them did $179k in 0.4 days).
That path requires live scores, an event feed, and speed — a different business entirely.
| Rule | Why |
|---|---|
| Screen on lifetime profit | daily and weekly boards are variance filters |
| Rebates collected ≠ money made | the largest rebate collector may be the largest loser (§1) |
| Check the time span | the activity feed is capped, so a low-frequency wallet's window ≈ lifetime while a busy one may be days — not comparable |
| Judge category from the tape | one wallet labelled a category winner had 82% of its volume outside match markets |
The costliest finding here was not how winners win, but how losers get mistaken for winners: a wallet eighth on the rebate table with $254k collected was down $3.9 million lifetime. Before copying anyone, check their lifetime profit.