Learn how to deploy a Polymarket bot on a VPS with systemd, secure credentials, WebSocket reconnection, logging, restart recovery, and production safeguards.
A trading bot that works perfectly on a laptop can still fail in production.
The difference is rarely the strategy itself. Production introduces process supervision, network interruptions, credential security, time synchronization, logging, restart behavior, and the simple requirement that the machine must keep running when nobody is watching it.
For a serious automated system, the VPS is part of the trading architecture—not just somewhere to execute a binary.
By Bo$onaX
Polymarket trading bots • Quantitative trading • Rust • Web3 infrastructure
GitHub: https://github.com/n9xdev/poly-alpha-lab
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What the VPS actually needs to provide
A useful deployment separates four responsibilities:
┌─────────────────────┐
│ Polymarket APIs │
└──────────┬──────────┘
│
REST / WebSocket
│
┌──────────────┐ ┌────────▼────────┐
│ Strategy │─────►│ Trading Bot │
│ Engine │ │ Runtime │
└──────────────┘ └────────┬────────┘
│
┌─────────▼─────────┐
│ Logs / State / │
│ Monitoring │
└───────────────────┘
Polymarket currently exposes separate API surfaces for market discovery, CLOB trading, account data, and real-time streams. The CLOB handles prices, order books, and order management, while WebSocket channels provide market and authenticated user updates.
That means the VPS should be designed around persistent connectivity rather than a simple run bot command.
Choose the deployment model before choosing the VPS
For a small Rust bot, a Linux VPS with a systemd-managed service is usually a straightforward architecture.
A typical layout might be:
/opt/polymarket-bot/
├── bin/
│ └── polymarket-bot
├── config/
│ └── production.toml
├── logs/
└── state/
The executable should run as a dedicated non-root user. The source repository does not need to be exposed through a public web server, and SSH should be the primary administrative interface.
The important distinction is between configuration and secrets.
Keep strategy parameters, market filters, and operational settings in configuration files or environment variables. Private keys, CLOB credentials, and other sensitive material should never be committed to Git.
Polymarket's current CLOB authentication uses two layers: wallet-based signing for L1 authentication and API credentials/HMAC-SHA256 for authenticated CLOB requests.
Build the bot for unattended execution
A VPS changes how the application should behave.
The process must tolerate:
- temporary API failures
- WebSocket disconnects
- DNS/network problems
- malformed market data
- rejected orders
- process restarts
- machine reboots
A production bot should therefore have explicit logging and reconnect behavior instead of assuming the network is permanent.
For example, a WebSocket connection should conceptually behave like:
connect
↓
authenticate if required
↓
subscribe
↓
receive events
↓
process events
↓
connection lost?
├── no → continue
└── yes → backoff → reconnect → resubscribe
Avoid an infinite tight reconnect loop. Exponential backoff with a bounded maximum delay prevents a network outage from turning into unnecessary CPU and connection pressure.
Polymarket documents separate public market WebSocket streams and authenticated user streams, so the bot architecture should distinguish market-data failure from account/order-state failure.
Use systemd instead of keeping an SSH session open
A common beginner deployment is:
ssh server
./polymarket-bot
Then the terminal closes and the bot disappears.
A production process manager should own the application lifecycle.
A minimal systemd unit can look like:
[Unit]
Description=Polymarket Trading Bot
After=network-online.target
Wants=network-online.target
[Service]
User=polymarket
WorkingDirectory=/opt/polymarket-bot
ExecStart=/opt/polymarket-bot/bin/polymarket-bot
Restart=always
RestartSec=5
EnvironmentFile=/etc/polymarket-bot.env
[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
Then:
sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl enable --now polymarket-bot
sudo systemctl status polymarket-bot
This gives the bot an important property: recovery without human intervention.
The machine can reboot. The process can crash. The service manager brings it back.
Logging is part of the trading system
Do not only log errors.
Useful production events include:
INFO market subscription established
INFO websocket connected
INFO signal generated
INFO order submitted
INFO order acknowledged
INFO order filled
WARN websocket disconnected
WARN order rejected
ERROR authentication failure
Never log private keys, API secrets, passphrases, or complete authentication headers.
For strategy debugging, include identifiers and timestamps that allow you to reconstruct what happened without exposing credentials.
Test the deployment before enabling real trading
A VPS deployment should pass several failure tests:
- Reboot the VPS.
- Restart the bot manually.
- Disconnect the network temporarily.
- Kill the process.
- Force a WebSocket reconnect.
- Verify logs remain useful.
- Confirm credentials are not printed.
- Confirm the bot does not duplicate orders after recovery.
The last test deserves special attention.
A restart-safe trading system needs to understand its existing order and position state before blindly generating new orders. Otherwise, recovering from a crash can create exposure the strategy never intended.
Deployment is not the same as profitability
A VPS can improve availability, consistency, and operational control. It cannot make an unprofitable strategy profitable.
Execution still depends on market liquidity, spread, fees, slippage, adverse selection, strategy assumptions, and the behavior of other participants.
Polymarket's documentation currently separates order management, real-time updates, fees, market making, and other trading mechanics into dedicated areas, so those concerns should be treated as components of the trading system rather than deployment details.
A good production deployment therefore has a simple objective:
Make the software predictable before making the strategy aggressive.
Once the bot can restart cleanly, reconnect reliably, preserve state, protect credentials, and explain its own behavior through logs, the VPS stops being a temporary server and becomes dependable trading infrastructure.
Educational purposes only. Automated trading involves financial and operational risk. No profitability is guaranteed.
