Following the trust crisis in March this year due to the oracle manipulation attack regarding the "whether Ukraine will reach a rare earth trading agreement with Trump before April" event, Polymarket has once again fallen into a "truth" controversy over Ukraine, and compared to the previous incident involving 7 million dollars, this time the event will affect the ownership of a massive 140 million dollars.
- Odaily Note: Details of the previous controversy can be found in《Polymarket Encounters Oracle Manipulation Attack, Can Large Holders Manipulate Voting Rights?》.
Core Controversy: Did Zelensky Wear a Suit or Not?
The involved prediction pool is about "whether Ukrainian President Zelensky will wear a suit before July", with the judgment standard being "whether Zelensky will be photographed or recorded wearing a suit between May 22 and June 30, 2025, Eastern Time". In February this year, Zelensky was criticized by US conservative media for not wearing a suit during a meeting with Trump, and since then, speculation about whether Zelensky would wear a suit on formal occasions has been ongoing.
As shown in the image, the success rate of "No" in the prediction pool has risen to 98%, while "Yes" has dropped to 2% - so the question is, June has already passed, logically speaking, wearing a suit means wearing a suit, and not wearing means not wearing, so why is there still no definitive conclusion?
The key to the controversy is that Zelensky attended a NATO event on June 24 wearing a piece of clothing that seemed to be a suit, yet not quite traditional...
Although this outfit does not look like the typical suit people are familiar with, most media still generally believe that Zelensky did wear a suit.
- BBC reported: "Zelensky took off his military uniform and put on a black suit at the NATO summit."
- The New York Post published a headline stating: "Zelensky took off his T-shirt and put on a suit to meet with President Trump."
- Even the account seemingly belonging to Polymarket, Polymarket Intel (@PolymarketIntel), described Zelensky's arrival at the venue as: "President Zelensky wore a suit last night."
From the above information, it seems the event result will develop towards "wore a suit", but things are obviously not that simple.
In the article from March, we previously introduced that Polymarket relies on the UMA oracle to determine event results, with the following determination process:
- Result Report: After the event, anyone can report the result to UMA.
- Dispute Window: After the report is submitted, there is a dispute period where anyone can challenge the report. If no one disputes, the report result will be accepted; if there is a dispute, UMA's dispute resolution mechanism will decide the final result.
- Dispute Resolution: UMA token holders need to vote to determine the correct result, with UMA incentivizing honest behavior and punishing malicious actions.
In this event, although most users tend to believe "Zelensky did wear a suit", not everyone thinks so. According to Polymarket's process records, the prediction pool ultimately reached the third step, meaning someone disputed the original report's result, thus requiring a UMA vote to determine the final outcome.
The UMA official governance interface shows that the final result vote for this prediction pool will end in 17 hours. Although the final result is not yet determined, because some UMA whales chose "did not wear", Polymarket's prediction success rate has shown a significant disparity.
This situation has triggered massive dissatisfaction in the Polymarket community. As of the time of writing, the number of replies under the related prediction pool has exceeded 24,000, with many users openly venting their anger.
Polymarket, as the platform, naturally could not escape criticism. First, because Polymarket officially stated after the pool's dispute that "reliable reports have not yet confirmed whether Zelensky wore a suit", without explaining what constitutes a "reliable report", potentially misleading the community; second, because users discovered that Polymarket Intel (@PolymarketIntel), which previously posted about "Zelensky wearing a suit", has modified its account description to "community-owned", seemingly attempting to shift blame.
In their fury, many users have begun calling for complaints to regulatory agencies like SEC, FBI, and CIA through replies to the original post and other social media channels, with some even providing detailed complaint channels and tutorials.
Moreover, overseas crypto influencer Martin Shkreli has already published a YouTube video, claiming he has contacted Polymarket's main investor Founders Fund, seemingly attempting to exert pressure at the investor level.
At the end of June, the market just heard that Polymarket is raising nearly 200 million dollars at a valuation of over 1 billion dollars, with Founders Fund as the lead investor. At this critical moment of financing negotiations, Polymarket has again fallen into a trust crisis, and the involved amount is large enough, with community condemnation emotions growing stronger. In the most extreme case, this might impact Polymarket's financing progress.
