Polymarket’s $7M Ukraine Mineral Deal Debacle Traced to Oracle Whale

Polymarket will not reimburse bettors after a prediction market was resolved early with an inaccurate result.

The market about whether Ukraine would agree to a deal with the Trump Administration for rare earth minerals was supposed to resolve either when a deal was reached or by March 31, whichever came sooner. Instead, it appears that a whale with as much as five million governance tokens for the UMA oracle used by Polymarket was able to force through a premature “Yes” resolution that such a deal had been made.

That brought a backlash from bettors and industry watchers, particularly after Polymarket announced on Discord, “Unfortunately, because this wasn't a market failure, we are not able to issue refunds.”

Calling the outcome an “unprecedented situation,” Polymarket said it was working closely with UMA to make sure the situation cannot happen again.

“This is not a part of the future we want to build,” Polymarket said. “We will build up systems, monitoring, and more to make sure this doesn't repeat itself.”

More than $7 million in bets had been made on the prediction market when it closed.

What happened?

A bad actor appears to have made a successful governance attack on UMA, a decentralized oracle protocol that resolves disputed outcomes with a vote of UMA token holders.

According to an X post by threat researcher Vladimir S., a single UMA whale with three accounts containing five million tokens was able to cast 25% of the votes to resolve the market in favor of Yes.

However, he added that a Polymarket user claimed that it was the usual validators and that a clarification statement from Polymarket that it was too early to resolve the market came too late to influence the vote.

That led AI security protocol Veritas Protocol to comment, “Whether it’s a timing issue or a deliberate attack, 25% of votes coming from just three accounts is a red flag.”

Promising to build more precise rules and a “more defined and timely clarification system,” Polymarket said, “We're committed to building the future of prediction markets, which requires building resilient systems in which everyone can trust.”