Decentralized in Name Only?

Ah, the grand farce of decentralization 🀑. Polymarket, a platform that prides itself on being a bastion of decentralized prediction markets, has found itself in the midst of a controversy that threatens to upend its very foundations.

  • It all began with a seemingly innocuous question: would Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy don a suit before July? πŸ€”
  • UMA, the decentralized oracle tasked with resolving this question, has been accused of enabling manipulation and undermining factual correctness through its voting system πŸ—³οΈ.
  • Prominent bettor RememberAmalek has called for a rethink of the resolution mechanism, suggesting that centralization by Polymarket itself may be the only solution 🀝.

But how did we get here? UMA, a protocol separate from Polymarket, has a history of making contentious rulings that have left even Polymarket scratching its head πŸ€”.

This time, it’s the BBC, New York Post, and others that have described Zelenskyy’s outfit as a suit πŸ‘•. Yet, the market is set to resolve “No”, leaving those who bet on the $200 million market feeling rather…suited πŸ˜’.

RememberAmalek, a Polymarket bettor with a penchant for predicting the unpredictable, has earned over $1 million in wins πŸ€‘. But even he is not immune to the whims of UMA’s voting system 🀯.

“UMA’s voting incentives encourage people to vote with the perceived majority to avoid penalties, not based on factual correctness,” he said πŸ—£οΈ. “This creates conditions ripe for manipulation.”

And manipulate they do πŸ€₯. With 95% of UMA tokens held by large holders, it’s no wonder that the voting system is skewed in favor of those with the most tokens πŸ’Έ.

“One person holding millions of tokens and deciding multi-million dollar outcomes is not decentralization,” RememberAmalek said, his voice dripping with sarcasm πŸ™„.

So, what’s the solution? Perhaps, ironically, centralization 🀝. But done professionally and transparently, by Polymarket itself, not some outside protocol πŸ“.

Because, as RememberAmalek so aptly put it, “this isn’t decentralized” πŸ™…β€β™‚οΈ.

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2025-07-09 14:50