Best Practices

Running PolyBot on a personal computer means downtime whenever you close the lid or restart. A cheap VPS keeps the bot running 24/7 — critical for Snipe Mode and Arb-First strategies where missed windows can't be recovered.

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OS & Setup

Always choose Ubuntu 22.04 LTS as your server OS. It's officially supported, has the longest security update window, and all PolyBot documentation is written with Ubuntu commands. After provisioning:

## Initial VPS setup (run as root or with sudo)

# Update packages
apt update && apt upgrade -y

# Install Docker
curl -fsSL https://get.docker.com | sh

# Add your user to docker group
usermod -aG docker $USER

# Install Docker Compose v2
apt install docker-compose-plugin -y

# Verify
docker --version && docker compose version

Your VPS holds the private key that authorises trades on your Polymarket account. Treat it like a server that holds financial credentials — because it is.

SSH: Key Auth Only

The single most important hardening step: disable password authentication and use SSH keys only. Brute-force attacks on servers with password auth are continuous and relentless.

# On your LOCAL machine — copy public key to VPS
ssh-keygen -t ed25519 -C "polybot-vps"
ssh-copy-id -i ~/.ssh/id_ed25519.pub user@your-vps-ip

# On the VPS — disable password auth
sudo nano /etc/ssh/sshd_config
# Set: PasswordAuthentication no
# Set: PubkeyAuthentication yes

sudo systemctl restart sshd

UFW Firewall

Only expose the two ports you actually need: SSH (22) and the PolyBot dashboard (8080). Block everything else by default.

sudo ufw default deny incoming
sudo ufw default allow outgoing
sudo ufw allow 22/tcp    # SSH
sudo ufw allow 8080/tcp  # PolyBot dashboard
sudo ufw enable
sudo ufw status

fail2ban

sudo apt install fail2ban -y
sudo systemctl enable fail2ban --now
# Default config blocks IPs after 5 failed SSH attempts

Private Key Storage

Never store your wallet private key in plaintext in a publicly readable location. Keep it in your .env file with strict permissions:

chmod 600 .env      # owner read/write only
chown $USER:$USER .env

How you size positions has a larger impact on long-term survival than almost any other factor. Too large and a losing streak wipes you out. Too small and you can't compound meaningfully.

The 2% Rule for Beginners

When you're starting out, never risk more than 2% of your total bot balance on a single trade. With $200 in your bot wallet, that's $4 per trade. This gives you 50 consecutive losing trades before a 100% loss — enough to observe the strategy's true behaviour over a statistically valid sample.

Kelly Criterion (for Advanced Users)

Once you have 100+ trade history and a reliable win rate estimate, switch to Kelly sizing. PolyBot implements ¼ Kelly by default — the full Kelly fraction divided by 4, which significantly reduces variance while maintaining most of the growth rate. Configure it in config.yml:

# config.yml
sizing_mode: kelly
kelly_fraction: 0.25       # 1/4 Kelly — recommended
max_position_pct: 0.10     # Hard cap: never more than 10% in one trade
min_position_usdc: 2.00    # Minimum useful position size after fees

Build Up Slowly

Start with $50–$100. Run Paper Mode for a week to see the strategy in action. Switch to live with $50. Scale up to $100, then $200, then $500 — only once you're comfortable with how the bot behaves in adverse market conditions. There's no rush. Prediction markets will always be there.

A bot running unsupervised can amplify problems if left unchecked. Build a lightweight monitoring routine from day one.

Daily Dashboard Check

Spend 2 minutes each morning reviewing: current balance vs. yesterday, number of trades placed overnight, any Kill Switch events, and Telegram alert history. The dashboard Home tab shows all of this at a glance.

Telegram Alert Configuration

Set up Telegram alerts to notify you on every trade, every Kill Switch trigger, and every daily loss limit hit. This way you're informed of unusual behaviour without babysitting the dashboard:

# In .env
TELEGRAM_TOKEN=your-bot-token
TELEGRAM_CHAT_ID=your-chat-id
TELEGRAM_ALERT_ON_TRADE=true
TELEGRAM_ALERT_ON_KILL_SWITCH=true
TELEGRAM_ALERT_ON_LOSS_LIMIT=true
TELEGRAM_MIN_TRADE_SIZE_ALERT=5  # Only notify on trades ≥ $5

VPS Uptime Monitoring

Use a free uptime monitoring service (UptimeRobot, BetterUptime) to ping your VPS every 5 minutes. If it goes down, you get an immediate email or Telegram alert. Set the monitored URL to http://your-vps-ip:8080/health — PolyBot exposes a health endpoint that returns HTTP 200 when running correctly.

# Test the health endpoint
curl http://your-vps-ip:8080/health
# Expected: {"status":"ok","version":"2.4.0","mode":"live"}

Evaluating a trading bot after 5 trades is like judging a poker player after 5 hands. The sample size is meaningless. Here's how to evaluate performance correctly.

Minimum Sample Size

You need a minimum of 50–100 trades before drawing any conclusions about a strategy's edge. With fewer trades, random variance dominates and a "winning" strategy can look terrible, and vice versa. Be patient.

Look at Sharpe Ratio, Not Win Rate

Win rate alone is misleading. A bot winning 70% of trades but losing 5× on each loss is a losing strategy. Focus on:

Interpreting Losses & Drawdowns

Drawdowns are an inevitable part of any trading strategy — even consistently profitable ones. The key questions when you're in a drawdown are:

• Is the drawdown within historical bounds? Check the max drawdown stat in Analytics. If the current drawdown is smaller than the historical max, the bot may be behaving normally.
• Has anything changed in the market? A strategy optimised on political markets will underperform during sports-heavy event periods. Consider switching market types temporarily.
• Has your configuration changed? A recent config edit — higher confidence threshold, different sizing mode — could explain a sudden shift in behaviour.

Docker handles most of the 24/7 reliability concern, but there are a few extra steps to ensure the bot survives VPS reboots and network interruptions.

# docker-compose.yml — ensure restart policy is set
services:
  polybot:
    image: polybotme/polybot:latest
    restart: unless-stopped  # ← auto-restarts on crash/reboot
    env_file: .env
    ports:
      - "8080:8080"
    volumes:
      - ./config.yml:/app/config.yml
      - ./data:/app/data       # persists trade history

Enable Docker on Boot

sudo systemctl enable docker

With both restart: unless-stopped and Docker enabled on boot, PolyBot will automatically resume after any VPS reboot — no manual intervention needed.

Use a Dedicated Trading Wallet

Create a separate wallet exclusively for PolyBot trading. Never use your primary wallet that holds significant savings, NFTs, or other assets. This way, even in the worst case — if your VPS were compromised — the attacker can only access the dedicated trading wallet's Polymarket balance.

Keep POL for Gas

Polygon transactions require POL (formerly MATIC) for gas fees. Keep at least 0.5–1 POL in your trading wallet at all times. At current gas prices, 1 POL covers thousands of transactions. Top up when the balance drops below 0.2 POL — the Telegram alerts system can notify you when the gas balance is low (Dashboard → Settings → Notifications → "Alert on low POL balance").

Knowing when to pause is as important as knowing how to run. Pause PolyBot in these situations:

• Daily loss limit triggers repeatedly — if the bot hits its daily loss limit 3 or more days in a row, something is wrong. Pause, investigate the trade log, and consider switching to Paper Mode.
• Major unexpected news events — market-moving surprises (elections called off, major protocol hacks, legal rulings) can cause extreme price dislocations that the model wasn't trained on. Pause until markets stabilise.
• Polymarket maintenance or API issues — check Polymarket's status page. Trading during API degradation can result in double-orders or unfilled positions at stale prices.
• You're updating config significantly — always pause the bot before making config changes, then validate in Paper Mode for a few hours before re-enabling live trading.
• You're going offline for an extended period — if you won't be able to check the bot for more than 48 hours, lower your position size caps or switch to Paper Mode. Unforeseen market events are rare but they do happen.

# Pause the bot instantly (cancels open orders)
# Click Kill Switch in dashboard, OR via CLI:
docker exec polybot polybot kill-switch

# Switch to Paper Mode without full restart
docker exec polybot polybot set-mode paper