Polymarket Dodgers Astros Fuckery

I opened Polymarket this morning to numberous comments that last night's Dodgers Astros game (which the Astros won 18-1) had been resolved in favour of the Dodgers. The word was that someone proposed the Dodgers on UMA resolution and it wasn't disputed. I am also reading the Polymarket staff have indicated that Astros holders will be given the full proper value of their shares. I don't know if this will come at the expense of Dodgers holders who got their at improper full value.

This is not the first time Polymarket has had markets go down to fuckery. Last year the Venezuelan election was resolved in favour of the opposition despite Maduro winning. More recently, the market for Fordow plant to be destroyed resolved prematurely to yes while Zelensky to wear a suit resolved to no. Although both of these markets have sufficient ambiguity that I would have recommended staying away from both regardless, this is the first time that a market with black and white acceptance criteria has been subverted to a wrong outcome.

Perhaps the 4th of July was the perfect chance to spring a surprise like this, especially when American users are off and it being on a market whose result was so undeniable that nobody was really watching its resolution process. Nonetheless, this does pose a larger threat to Polymarket's credibility than any of the other snafus to date. The UMA process will be under scrutiny now and the ball is in Polymarket's court as to how they will deal with it. Extending the UMA dispute window would be one method. Manual resolution by a member of staff would be another (albeit that would eliminate the point of the UMA). Time will tell.

As I have always said about these wild west markets, caveat emptor. You are solely responsible for reading the acceptance criteria and factoring the risk of fuckery into the equation (even if you may still have legal recourse afterwards). That includes the risk of events like last night (and furthermore even though it appears that nobody will be left out of pocket as a result of it). If you are going to play these markets to take advantage of superior odds, make sure you double, triple and quadruple check the acceptance criteria before you take anything and if you're in any doubt, cash out before resolution. It's more important that you stay safe than you get left complaining about "the whales". Let's hope that Polymarket tightens its processes so that incidents like this don't happen again.