Author: Omer Goldberg, Founder of Chaos Labs
Compiled by: Deep Tide TechFlow
When the cost of corruption is less than the reward, truth becomes a commodity, sold to the highest bidder.
The controversy over the Zelensky lawsuit against Polymarket is not a minor glitch. It is a fatal flaw in a $200 million human-controlled oracle: when the cost of corruption is lower than the reward, truth becomes a commodity, sold to the highest bidder.
Zelensky's $200 million fashion show
Imagine this: Zelensky walks into a NATO summit wearing a suit that every major news outlet refers to as a suit. The market's trading volume is $200 million. The outcome seems obvious. Then, the UMA oracle votes 'no'.
This is not because Zelensky did not wear a suit, nor because the evidence is unclear, but because those controlling the oracle bet tens of millions of dollars against the outcome; they only need to leverage their voting power to rewrite reality without any real risk.
(Deep Tide Note: UMA is an open-source protocol, short for Universal Market Access. It relies on economic incentives and dispute resolution to ensure the accuracy of price data.)
Introduction to oracle manipulation
The disturbing fact about human-controlled oracles is that humans have biases.
Some of the largest UMA holders are significantly bullish on 'no'.
When 'yes' looks like the correct outcome, they do not accept failure; they flip the vote.
Cast over 23 million UMA, worth about $25 million, to challenge the outcome.
This is not decentralization. It is whales protecting their interests. With enough UMA and coordination, truth doesn't matter, results do.
Broader oracle crisis
This issue extends far beyond Polymarket and UMA. Human-controlled oracles are susceptible to various manipulations and incentive design traps.
While we use the Zelensky Suit Market as a case study, we note that we have previously observed this issue in the Ukrainian mineral trading market in March 2025.
Every major prediction market faces the same fundamental challenge.
When humans control the truth, truth yields to human interests: escape the human-controlled oracle: replace intent with intelligence.
The only true solution to human oracles is to remove humans.
AI-driven oracles change this:
No economic incentive: the model takes no stance or cares who wins.
Bias-resistant decision rules: same training weights, same prompts, same temperature = the model scores evidence against the same fundamental standard. AI has no emotions, no stakes, no behind-the-scenes coordination.
Inference pipeline: every intermediate step can be logged, examined, and replayed.
Machine-scale throughput: parallel ingestion of thousands of information sources, with no fatigue or side trades.
Residuals still exist, but they are random statistical noise. This is much harder for traders. With clear resolution standards and verified data feeds, state-of-the-art models are already delivering production-level accuracy, and the curve is improving sharply.
Residual noise beats computational lies
The future of prediction markets requires completely removing humans from truth determination.
The architecture is as follows:
Predefined source hierarchy: Reuters > BBC > local news > blogs
Cryptographic proof of data sources: verifying that information has not been tampered with
Multi-agent consensus: multiple AI systems reach independent conclusions
Transparent reasoning: complete audit trails for every decision
Immutable evidence: proof stored on the blockchain that cannot be modified or deleted
Truth discovery in a post-truth world
Prediction markets are a microcosm of a larger challenge. When Wikipedia can be edited, news can be modified, and 'facts' can be negotiated, we need systems that can establish fundamental truths.
This covers the following areas:
Election integrity and verification
Scientific consensus and research verification
News authenticity in the era of deep fakes
Record keeping and tamper-proofing
Corporate transparency and accountability
Final thoughts
The choice facing prediction markets is stark: continue to pretend that incentivized humans can be neutral arbiters of truth, or establish a truth-determining system that completely eliminates human bias.
The market itself has answered this question. When $200 million flows into the market, an obvious outcome, and that obvious outcome fails, this system reveals its nature.
Truth discovery is too important to be auctioned off to the highest bidder.
