Polymarket Contradicts Its Oracle Service in Rarity for Prediction Market

• In a rare move, Polymarket has contradicted its decentralized oracle service UMA with regard to the resolution of a market betting on whether Barron Trump was likely involved with the DJT token.
• Neither Barron Trump nor Donald Trump's campaign has made an official statement about the token.

Polymarket has signaled it may overrule UMA, a decentralized oracle service that referees the fast-growing platform's crypto-based prediction markets.

Controversy has been brewing for days since UMA resolved a market asking whether it was more likely than not that Barron Trump, son of the former U.S. president, was involved in a meme coin called DJT. The oracle service decided several times the answer was "no," and holders of "yes" shares protested.

On Wednesday, Polymarket said it believed UMA got it wrong, and it would soon announce a fix.

Notice:

We firmly believe that UMA got this resolution wrong. We’re working on a near term solution and will announce it today. It’s critical to uphold the integrity of the marketplace and pricing. Standby

— Polymarket (@Polymarket) June 26, 2024

Polymarket's surprise move is the latest wrinkle in the two-week-long saga of DJT, a Trump-themed memecoin that neither the Trump campaign nor Barron has acknowledged or denied being involved in.

"This market will resolve to 'Yes' if a preponderance of evidence suggests that Barron Trump was involved in the creation of the Solana token $DJT. Otherwise this market will resolve to 'No,'" the contract on Polymarket read. "Determination as to whether Barron was involved in the creation of $DJT will be made by this market's decentralized resolver, UMA, and will take into account all available evidence as of 12 PM ET, June 23."

Whenever the outcome of a prediction market is disputed, UMA, a decentralized "optimistic" oracle, is brought in to resolve it with UMA tokenholders voting on the outcome. In the case of the DJT market, an overwhelming majority of UMA holders voted for the "no" resolution.

In total, bettors put more than $1 million on the line, and amid the radio silence from the Trump family and campaign, Martin “Pharma Bro” Shkreli, a convicted felon, has been adamantly making public statements that Barron was involved.

On Wednesday, Shkreli posted a series of screenshots on X purporting to show one of his associates saying that he's "trying to get Barron to come out of his shell," but that lawyers are likely advising the former president's son not to talk.

pic.twitter.com/986BOIVUIF

— Martin Shkreli (e/acc) (@MartinShkreli) June 27, 2024

This isn't the first time UMA as a method of contract resolution has faced controversy. Questions on what it meant to "find" the missing OceanGate submersible, which imploded near the wreckage of the Titanic, put its relationship with Polymarket in the spotlight last fall.

In May, this relationship was once again tested when some bettors questioned if an Ethereum exchange-traded fund (ETF) was approved – UMA resolved the contract to yes – or if it was still working its way through the bureaucratic leviathan of the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Polymarket CEO Shayne Coplan didn't immediately respond to a request for comment about what the fix for this current UMA controversy would be, or the timeline for its implementation.

The DJT token is down 7% on-day, according to on-chain data.