How Polymarket markets resolve

Polymarket resolves markets through the UMA optimistic oracle — a smart-contract system rather than a person. Someone proposes the outcome and posts a bond in USDC.e; that proposal enters a challenge period; if nobody disputes it, it finalises and the market pays out. A successful proposer gets the bond back plus a reward. An unsuccessful one forfeits the bond. A disputed proposal goes into UMA’s dispute-resolution process instead of paying.

Markets resolve according to rules written on the market page before trading starts. Those rules, not anybody’s reading of the news, are what the oracle is asked to apply.

The overwhelming majority of markets settle exactly as written. The ones that do not are almost always the ones where the wording and the world diverged — an event happens in a way the criteria did not anticipate, a source the rules named goes quiet, a technicality decides it. From the outside those markets looked like the obvious ones.

For a position held to settlement, that risk sits alongside the time your capital is locked. Both are invisible on the order book and both are in the time-value calculator.

Read the resolution criteria before you read the price. Every market page we publish prints the criteria in full for that reason — the price is one number and the rules are the thing that turns it into money.

The UMA optimistic oracle, a smart-contract system. An outcome is proposed with a bond, and it finalises if it survives the challenge period unchallenged.

It enters UMA's dispute-resolution process rather than paying out immediately, and an unsuccessful proposer forfeits their bond.

$1 per share. Losing shares become worthless and trading in the market stops.