Nine anonymous cryptocurrency wallets have effectively gained control over who wins and loses on Polymarket’s most contested prediction market bets, giving a tiny group of people who were not appointed outsized power over billions of dollars of wagers.
Over the past year, nearly 2,000 Polymarket financial contracts have been disputed and adjudicated by the company’s complicated third-party resolution mechanism — including bets on war, elections and geopolitical conflict. In April alone, 230 contracts that attracted more than $1 billion in trading ended up being decided through the process, up from 79 contracts six months earlier, according to analysis of blockchain records and past votes.
Under Polymarket’s rules, whenever the outcome of one of its financial contracts faces an official challenge, the dispute goes to a vote among holders of UMA, an independent cryptocurrency. In one recent case, UMA owners voted on how to resolve a contract tied to whether the U.S. and Israel had struck Iranian facilities in February, with the odds bouncing around as traders tried to guess how the UMA holders would vote.
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