Members of the Polymarket community have expressed grave issues over a new oracle ruling that was passed using the UMA protocol. The verdict has cost a large prediction market.
The conflict concerns a settled market worth over 200 million dollars, and some people are accusing large UMA holders of manipulation.
Controversy Surrounds Zelenskyy’s Suit Market
The controversy lies in a Polymarket pair of predictions that questioned whether or not the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy would be in a suit by July. There were significant swings in the market, particularly during June, when there was an abnormal increase in the voting against the bill.
Although the majority opinion among the users was that yes, according to the evidence available and the results of visible work presented, the UMA token holders ultimately voted in favor of No.
Society says this was contrary to popular news in the media and general knowledge. The designer of the attire even admitted that it looked like a suit. Nevertheless, in the case of Polymarket, since it is also integrated with the UMA protocol, a decision was in the hands of token holders as opposed to an impartial evaluation of facts.
Governance Concerns and Whale Influence
Market resolution UMA holds that token owners may vote on market decisions, and such an arrangement has created the debate of centralization of decision-making authority. In the Zelenskyy case, whales placed approximately 23 million UMA tokens, or about 25 million U.S. dollars, to advance a controversial result.
In total, just four whales are said to be in control of more than 40 percent of the entire UMA supply, and one of them has around 25 percent of the supply in their possession.
The mechanism enables the participants to put tokens on stake to contest outcomes, but also offers a 21% annualized yield. Those opposed to this system say that manipulation becomes coordinated in that the market has grey areas, and the evidence is far-fetched.
Despite such harshness of punishment as cutting down the number of votes on one of the malicious votes, the punishment is weak, and it would not be a significant disincentive to engage in this activity.
Call for Oracle System Reform
The controversy has once again brought back the topic of the security of the Polymarket oracle platform. The community is demanding reforms that would curtail the power of the whale in voting and introduce more objective approaches to solving the markets.
This is the second significant governance controversy since February, when Polymarket entered a partnership with UMA.
Polymarket’s increasing popularity and collaboration with X have made it one of the most popular platforms for predicting real-time events.
Nevertheless, the present problem has threatened its credibility since open interest in its product skyrocketed to around 138 million in the last month after being pegged at 88 million.
The number of traders making daily trades exceeds 20,000, and with this amount of activity, it is crucial to consider whether dealing with the market will be transparent and fair.