Abstract Let ℛ {\mathscr{R}} be a prime ring, 𝒬 r {\mathscr{Q}_{r}} the right Martindale quotient ring of ℛ {\mathscr{R}} and 𝒞 {\mathscr{C}} the extended centroid of ℛ {\mathscr{R}} . In this paper, we discuss the relationship between the structure of prime rings and the behavior of skew derivations on multilinear polynomials. More precisely, we investigate the m-potent commutators of skew derivations involving multilinear polynomials, i.e., ( [ δ ⁢ ( f ⁢ ( x 1 , … , x n ) ) , f ⁢ ( x 1 , … , x n ) ] ) m = [ δ ⁢ ( f ⁢ ( x 1 , … , x n ) ) , f ⁢ ( x 1 , … , x n ) ] , \big{(}[\delta(f(x_{1},\ldots,x_{n})),f(x_{1},\ldots,x_{n})]\big{)}^{m}=[% \delta(f(x_{1},\ldots,x_{n})),f(x_{1},\ldots,x_{n})], where 1 < m ∈ ℤ + {1<m\in\mathbb{Z}^{+}} , f ⁢ ( x 1 , x 2 , … , x n ) {f(x_{1},x_{2},\ldots,x_{n})} is a non-central multilinear polynomial over 𝒞 {\mathscr{C}} and δ is a skew derivation of ℛ {\mathscr{R}} .