Logan

Hopefully Polymarket is on precipice of replacing UMA, because the "oracle" that underpins the site is now a disinformation engine that has been taken over by rogue traders. (If you find the below post confusing, byzantine, stupid, or anything else, first of all that's probably partly my fault, and secondly that's also exactly what I am trying to convey: the resolution of markets is now a dizzying, corrupt mess.) -- The largest and most influential voter in the "oracle" that governs Polymarket's prediction market is no longer anyone with Risk Labs (UMA was created by a legit crypto company, but they've stopped updating UMA and largely abandoned it). It is now UMA Rocks, a collection of Polymarket traders. UMA Rocks decisions are made by various unqualified bozos, who have real-money positions in the markets they're voting to resolve, and thus have a strong incentives in resolving markets to something that personally benefits them. -- Which brings us to the market in question: corny loser Clavicular claimed/joked that he got a girl pregnant, as he has done in the past. He said she was pregnant within 10 days of meeting him. He offered no proof, and talks about it very vaguely, sometimes implying that it is true, sometimes implying that it is a joke. Polymarket has a relationship with Clavicular, and had a market up on a pregnancy announcement (we'll set aside whether Clavicular himself traded on this, I have no idea. He was aware of the market). Obviously a streamer is not inherently credible when his brand is making silly viral clips, and that is doubly true when the streamer is making vague comments. The rules correctly require a credible claim. It shouldn't expire yes until we get something...anything...that is credible. Common sense. Scrolling through the arguments, pretty much every single long-time user of Polymarket thinks it shouldn't count (even ironically including some yes holders). And as anyone who has tried to get pregnant with a partner will realize, his joke doesn't even make sense: it is next-to-impossible to go from sex to a positive pregnancy test within 10 days. But it IS going to expire to yes in a few hours for one reason: UMA Rocks has hijacked the voting process. A user named Scout (who was, at the time, one of the biggest yes holder and also a key UMA Rocks member) posted that it should be Yes because Clavicular is unimpeachable as a source on himself. Note here that Scout is already banned from Polymarket's discord server (very hard to do lol) for engaging in borderline criminal activity, before any of these events happened. Scout then propelled UMA Rocks to officially side with Yes. The second largest voter, a Risk Labs employee, then switched his vote after UMA Rocks voted (this was done out of self preservation, because if you vote on the losing side in UMA, you lose money). The vote was somewhat close in the first round, with "Yes" edging out "Too Early to Expire" in raw token votes (the vast majority of tokenholders voted "Too Early", but UMA Rocks led the small number of whales who actually decide the outcomes to voting "Yes"). Because of the way that UMA works -- it incentivizes the most popular answer rather than the truthful answer -- anything that is leading in a previous round is extremely likely to win. And so now the vote is overwhelmingly projected to go Yes. Clav's "announcement" was a few days ago, and we now know it is very unlikely that anyone is pregnant/girl was already kicked out of his house allegedly, and that it was extremely likely a viral joke from a streamer in need of positive PR...but the wheels are in motion and nobody is trying to stop it. -- Post-script: (1) Scout was kicked out of UMA Rocks a few hours ago for this scheme. (2) UMA Rocks has attempted to wield its influence in various markets since it became the largest holder of UMA a few weeks ago, often posting to flip the odds. But it also often ultimately fails, because Polymarket intercedes and clarifies against them. (3) Polymarket has strangely not clarified or commented on this one, despite it receiving a lot of attention. Which brings me to my final point. It's now been a year since the minerals market heist, where users lost millions of dollars to a fraudulent UMA scheme that took place over a weekend. We were assured that things would change. Unfortunately nothing has changed, and it has gotten far, far, far worse. UMA is far more vulnerable than it was a year ago, and the inmates are starting to take the asylum.