Ok, so this is a little bit of an exaggeration, but as part of my work, I do have access to some insider knowledge around O&G production at certain producers with very limited information. Obviously, it is unethical and, at times, illegal to trade on that information (even though it seems that ethics has left the modern discourse). So when I came across a particular Polymarket event, I was interested in how it would resolve.

This event (archive) doesn’t seem very problematic at first, but digging deeper, it has some glaring issues that, for me, eliminate Polymarket as a reasonable truthful prediction market. The premise of the event contract is whether QatarEnergy LNG would restart LNG production by the end of April. With some industry insight, I know that LNG production is one of these things where you must have ships ready to carry the LNG away while you produce; that is, you don’t have enough onshore storage to hold substantial amounts for very long. Why? Because super insulated tanks are expensive as heck and you need a lot of storage if you don’t have ships ready to take it and go. Storage also equals land which Qatar does not have infinite of.

Now, based on all the information about the Strait and QatarEnergy LNG’s news, there was no information that would corroborate LNG production being restarted. Indeed:

So, based on the fact that Strait was pseudo closed and QELNG hadn’t announced LNG production resuming, I was thinking, yep, this event is going to resolve no. Up until April 30 at 11:00 PM (unknown timezone), it was practically a sure bet that it’d resolve No. But let’s see - oh wait! Somehow, the odds shift enormously in the span of a few hours from 2.6% Yes to 97.2% Yes by May 1 at 5:00 AM (again, unknown timezone).

QELNG odds chart

Worst of all, this event resolved as “Yes” even after multiple proposed “No”. So I go digging and find the UMA vote record:

QELNG UMA vote summary

The sources include:

Wow, no official statement, no consensus of production having restarted i.e. past tense, and honestly, outside of the Reuters, most of these sources are neither reputable nor relying on public figures that would stake their personal reputation (i.e. all anonymous insiders).

This article saying Qatari LNG ships waiting in the Strait line is more compelling, but there is nothing suggesting they made it through.

As it turns out, UMA is just decentralized voting where money can choose when to dominate, and in this case, the rules of the Polymarket post were clear:

An official announcement that LNG production will resume at QatarEnergy LNG production facilities in Qatar must signal the end of the total LNG production halt effective immediately or on a specific date or clearly defined time window. Mere statements that production will resume at some undefined point in the future, or that production will resume once the halt has ended, will not count. The primary resolution source for this market will be official information from QatarEnergy (https://www.qatarenergy.qa/en/Pages/vHome.aspx); however, a consensus of credible reporting may also be used.

Yet, that did not matter. Somehow, UMA found that 0. there was no announcement on QElng’s website, 1. there was a consensus of credible reporting, and that 2. production had resumed before the end of April. Kalshi’s similar event was even worse going purely based on “seeks to begin” and similar language.

Long story short, UMA is just another web3/DAO scam for the masses to delude themselves into thinking that truth would somehow be incentivized to come out on top. But in my humble opinion, when money can buy a decision of the market, I view this as just a very complicated scam that can strike in unexpected ways. I don’t know for sure whether QELNG did or did not restart production, and I don’t know whether the reported ships did or did not make it through the strait. But in this case, the rules of the event were not met, and it should have resolved to “No”. Buyer beware.