An Ethereum wallet user, ‘BornTooLate.Eth’, manipulated a Ukraine-themed contract on UMA, a decision-making oracle used by Polymarket. The rogue actor became a top-5 governance staker with approximately 1.3 million UMA tokens. This significant holding allowed them to influence the resolution of the contract, which asked bettors to speculate on a deal involving U.S. access to Ukraine’s rare earth resources by the end of March. Despite the deal not being signed, the contract resolved to ‘yes’ due to BornTooLate.Eth’s vote. Surprisingly, the attack resulted in modest financial outcomes. The largest winner gained just over $55,000, while the biggest loser forfeited around $73,000. Accumulating the 1.3 million UMA tokens would have cost over $2 million. Polymarket has declared this incident not a ‘market failure’ and is collaborating with the UMA oracle team to prevent future occurrences.
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