Polymarket contracts asking whether or not President Donald Trump would declassify UFO information in 2025 remained at 5.5% on Dec. 6, however jumped towards 90% the subsequent day.
It’s believed that the set off was not a White Home announcement or a Pentagon press convention, however a decision proposal submitted to the UMA Protocol, a decentralized oracle that resolves polymarket disputes.
On December seventh, somebody claimed that the September doc from the All Domains Anomaly Decision Authority was declassified, and merchants purchased accordingly.
The deal had raised a lifetime complete of greater than $16 million by the point it was finalized final evening, however the odds spiked not due to new info however due to a governance vote in favor of a payout by the top of the yr.
The decision hinges on whether or not AARO’s four-page info doc, printed Sept. 19 and titled “AARO and the Declassification Course of,” meets the phrases of the settlement. That is what the whales determined.
The doc discusses AARO’s dedication to transparency and consists of screenshots of a beforehand categorized video often known as the “Jellyfish Video,” now accessible on the Protection Video Info Distribution Service.
The proponent argued that AARO operates underneath the Division of Protection, which studies to President Trump, and that the company’s official X account states that the content material consists of “newly declassified video.”
In accordance with the Dec. 7 UMA proposal, “All elements of the rule have been met. This market ought to resolve with a Sure.”
How the oracle controversy works
Polymarket’s decision course of routes disputed markets to the UMA protocol, a decentralized reality machine the place token holders vote on the result.
The phrases of the contract state {that a} “sure” will solely be paid if the Trump administration declassifies beforehand categorized information associated to extraterrestrial life and unidentified aerial phenomena by 11:59 p.m. ET on Dec. 31, 2025.
The primary supply of knowledge for the answer is official info from the US authorities, and the “Settlement on Credible Reporting” is used as a substitute. AARO paperwork meet the primary criterion as a result of they’re official .mil area publications of the Division of Protection.
Nonetheless, whether or not this constitutes “declassification” of the UAP file is a matter of debate.
Contrarian customers objected to the proposal, arguing that AARO’s doc was procedural steerage on the declassification course of, not declassification of particular UAP information.
This doc explains why UAP pictures usually stay categorized to guard sensor performance quite than due to extraterrestrial content material, and descriptions the multi-step evaluation course of that AARO makes use of to facilitate declassification.
Some beforehand shelved information usually are not launched. We publish a single video that explains the bureaucratic workflow. The dispute progressed by way of UMA’s escalation ladder: first proposal, controversy, governance vote, second controversy, and last evaluation.
In accordance with the UMA doc, no objections stay after the ultimate evaluation and Polymarket customers should settle for the outcomes.
Two questions come up concerning this timing.
First, why did it take practically three months for somebody to file a decision? The AARO doc was filed on September nineteenth, however the UMA proposal arrived on December seventh.
Second, why did polymarket odds skyrocket on the identical day the proposal was submitted? Both merchants obtained forward of the governance consequence and purchased YES shares cheaply earlier than the decision was pressured by vote, or UMA token holders orchestrated a squeeze by utilizing their governance voting energy to manufacture funds and monetize early positions.
AlphaRaccoon precedent
The controversy comes weeks after one other insider buying and selling incident at Polymarket.
On December 4th, it was reported that dealer AlphaRaccoon made greater than $1 million in earnings in at some point by betting on Google’s “Search Annual” market.
Google briefly leaked the information early on after which retracted it, however not till AlphaRaccoon received 22-23 on the prediction. The dealer’s account had $3.9 million in open positions and confirmed a historical past of early bets on the discharge of Gemini 3.0 earlier than official outcomes had been introduced.
The market judgment is that this habits suggests insider buying and selling.
The governance dynamics of the UFO contract replicate the data asymmetry that made AlphaRaccoon’s commerce so worthwhile.
In both case, it might not be not possible for a small group of potential Google insiders or UMA token holders with early information of the answer to behave earlier than the broader market reprices.
If somebody is aware of that the “Sure” proposal can be selected December seventh and understands how UMA voting works, they might accumulate YES shares at 5.5% and exit after the chances have elevated.
The distinction is that AlphaRaccoon could have misused non-public knowledge. UFO buying and selling takes benefit of ambiguities within the language of resolutions and the timing of governance proposals.
Statements from info disclosure activists
The Disclosure Celebration, a decentralized community centered on UAP transparency, dismissed the AARO doc launched in September as a public relations stunt.
In an in depth submit on September 19, the group argued that AARO’s claims about transparency “don’t stand as much as authorized scrutiny” and that the company’s justification for withholding UAP knowledge was “legally indefensible.”
The group famous that AARO claims its sensors are protected by UFO secrecy. Nonetheless, the Pentagon has already launched UAP footage from the identical sensor, creating contradictory accounts that might fail in a FOIA lawsuit.
This evaluation goes each methods. If the AARO doc is procedural PR quite than substantive declassification, the UMA proposal ought to fail.
However, the company’s dedication to transparency and the discharge of the jellyfish video give the “sure” aspect an argument.
The contract language doesn’t specify what number of information should be declassified or whether or not procedural steerage is necessary.
Asking whether or not the administration will “declassify beforehand categorized information,” the AARO doc reveals not less than one video body that was marked “unclassified” after evaluation.
Whether or not it meets the spirit of the contract is a query for UMA’s governance to reply, not the details themselves.
Who decides the reality?
This answer determines whether or not decentralized oracles can decide ambiguous real-world occasions or are weak to governance manipulation if the language is free.
If UMA votes “sure,” merchants who offered on the rally will argue that the oracle rewarded semantic video games quite than substance. If UMA votes “no,” early purchasers will argue that the platform ignores official authorities paperwork and fails to stick to its personal decision requirements.
Polymarket promotes itself as a discussion board for value discovery at real-world occasions. Nonetheless, the UFO contract reveals that “actual world” outcomes rely upon who interprets the language and when proposals are submitted.
Merchants who purchased YES at 5.5% on Dec. 7 both believed the AARO paperwork met the phrases of the deal, or they believed UMA’s governance can be persuaded regardless.
The deal was resolved after UMA’s last evaluation concluded final evening, and the market will now resolve whether or not the prediction platform will resolve the dispute by proof or by token-weighted voting.
