Edition 2026-07 · Polymarket · UMA optimistic oracle
Existing trackers score whether the crowd was right. This one scores whether the settlement was fought. Over sixteen months, $304.6M of traded volume passed through Polymarket resolutions that went to dispute before they settled, 8.4% of all traded volume carrying a UMA resolution.
Signature series
Contested dollars per month against the raw count rate. As the market count explodes, the count rate falls while the money contested climbs.
The record
Traded markets only. Untraded scaffold is excluded so it cannot swamp the signal.
| Month | Traded mkts | Disputed | Rate % | Vol-wtd % | Disputed volume | Multi-round |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mar '25 | 466 | 9 | 1.93 | 2.84 | $0.50M | 3 |
| Apr '25 | 3,191 | 39 | 1.22 | 22.52 | $17.56M | 11 |
| May '25 | 4,127 | 68 | 1.65 | 3.46 | $4.65M | 10 |
| Jun '25 | 6,381 | 78 | 1.22 | 16.90 | $32.61M | 17 |
| Jul '25 | 7,125 | 55 | 0.77 | 4.64 | $3.25M | 10 |
| Aug '25 | 8,215 | 59 | 0.72 | 4.02 | $2.93M | 8 |
| Sep '25 | 14,158 | 79 | 0.56 | 4.37 | $4.92M | 14 |
| Oct '25 | 16,056 | 60 | 0.37 | 2.90 | $5.63M | 8 |
| Nov '25 | 24,521 | 86 | 0.35 | 1.54 | $4.22M | 15 |
| Dec '25 | 30,874 | 196 | 0.64 | 11.50 | $50.12M | 41 |
| Jan '26 | 47,350 | 199 | 0.42 | 7.83 | $39.98M | 22 |
| Feb '26 | 58,653 | 188 | 0.32 | 4.91 | $20.84M | 29 |
| Mar '26 | 80,687 | 195 | 0.24 | 8.20 | $48.33M | 46 |
| Apr '26 | 95,445 | 169 | 0.18 | 13.55 | $69.06M | 34 |
Severity
How many propose-and-dispute rounds a market ran. A number nobody else publishes.
Where the money was
Largest markets by traded volume whose settlement was disputed. Marquee geopolitics is disproportionately the contested set.
Which markets get contested
Estimated over 2025-03 to 2025-12. A market's category and settlement size predict its dispute risk far better than its wording does.
By category
By oracle adapter · full window
The legacy adapters dispute three to six times as often as the current one. Which UMA adapter will resolve a market is known at listing, so this is a purely on-chain, listing-time risk signal.
Cite this edition
A version DOI is minted on Zenodo at launch and appears here in the citation.
Embed this
Badge (one number, self-contained SVG):
Chart (iframe, no external requests):
Machine-readable (CORS open, allowlisted keys only):
5cc722027511c4de8ae21db406bb0ae545480e947400ef1b1b745a25c8f49ac80x2c0367a9db231ddebd88a94b4f6461a6e47c58b10xee3afe347d5c74317041e2618c49534daf887c24Aggregate only: no individual accounts, no positions, no profit-and-loss. Method and full reproduction path on the methodology page. Data files at this permalink are immutable after approval.