A crisis of trust caused by a military uniform: How Zelensky's outfit exposed Polymarket's data woes

Crypto prediction market Polymarket has recently fallen into a quagmire of data credibility again due to a seemingly absurd controversy. The protagonist of this turmoil is neither a major financial agreement nor blockchain technology itself, but a military-style outfit of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. This incident serves as a mirror reflecting the fundamental dilemma of “truth verification” in the entire prediction market ecosystem.

The $79 Million Clothing Definition Battle

At the end of June 2025, a Polymarket user created a betting market: Will Zelensky put on the suit by July? This seemingly trivial question attracted $79 million in betting funds. The trigger for the incident was Zelensky’s dress at the NATO meeting - he wore a black shirt with a black jacket and sneakers, which raised a seemingly simple but actually complex question: is this a “suit”?

The initial result of the original market was ruled “yes”, but it was subsequently appealed twice and is currently in the final arbitration stage. Polymarket officials issued a statement on July 1, acknowledging the controversy and saying that at that point in time, “no reliable reports have been obtained to confirm that Zelensky was wearing a suit.” This vague official response, which was supposed to be the end of the question, became the beginning of the whole incident.

There has been a heated debate on social media about the definition of a “suit.” Proponents believe that this military-style outfit corresponds to the basic characteristics of the suit - matching fabrics, uniform color schemes, formal look. Opponents emphasize that a black shirt with a black jacket is more like an everyday military uniform, and sneakers do not meet formal wear requirements at all. Polymarket’s community account, Polymarket Intel, eventually classified it as a package, but this decision did not quell the controversy.

Interestingly, when Cointelegraph asked ChatGPT the same question, the AI model gave the opposite answer – it believed that the outfit lacked key elements of traditional suits and was more like a military uniform or tactical coat. Canadian fashion critic Derek Gay (a self-proclaimed “male dressing expert”) gave an ambiguous conclusion on June 26: “It’s both a suit and not a suit.” "

Repeated Disputes: Systemic failures in platform governance

This is not the first time Polymarket has been in trouble because of Zelensky’s dress. As early as May 31, a similar market was closed, also involving the definition of what Zelensky would wear when he attended the conference in Germany. That time, Polymarket finally ruled that the outfit was not a suit. And Derek Gay then pointed out that, by technical definition, the suit only needs to meet one condition: the jacket and pants are made of the same fabric. By this standard, Zelensky really wore a suit.

Zelensky himself has explained his choice not to wear formal attire. According to a Politico report in March, Zelensky declared that he would wear the suit after the war ended. The Ukrainian media “Kyiv Independent” further explained the deeper meaning of this position: wearing formal attire symbolizes the end of the war, but the war continues, so Zelensky insists on wearing in the style of military uniform. This dress choice is not only a personal preference, but also a political and strategic statement.

However, all this background information seems insignificant to Polymarket’s decision-making process. The problem with platforms is not the lack of information, but how it is handled in a verifiable, trustworthy way.

Oracle Crisis: Who Defines Reality?

Polymarket’s core technical support is UMA Protocol’s blockchain oracle. This system was originally designed to convert off-chain events (e.g., real-world news, data) into on-chain verifiable information. However, this system frequently falls into crises of confidence.

In March last year, a $700,000 bet on Ukrainian mineral trading on Polymarket sparked serious controversy over oracles. The allegation at the time was that the oracle was manipulated or out of control. Now, the “suit” turmoil has once again exposed the same problem: even the most intuitive reality judgments can fall into irreconcilable ambiguity when verified by oracles.

A recent report published by the blockchain database Truf.Network gets to the very essence of the problem. The report warns that the entire prediction market ecosystem relies on “data trust,” which has been broken. The reason is that “data is fragmented, unverifiable, and easily manipulated.” The central charge of this report is that the market itself collapses when no one can verify basic facts like price, who won, what the score was, or even whether it rained yesterday.

The deeper dilemma lies in conflicts of interest. When the person verifying the results is also a participant in the market, the truth itself becomes negotiable. This is not only a technical problem, but also a flaw at the level of system design.

Predict the market’s credibility crisis

The $79 million controversy caused by a sneaker is ostensibly gossip, but in essence it is the embodiment of a crisis of trust in crypto financial infrastructure. Polymarket is not an isolated case – the platform has already faced similar judgment dilemmas due to multiple incidents, including the TikTok ban controversy in January 2025. TikTok was eventually banned, but then reinstated, leaving no place for market judgment criteria.

Zelensky’s clothing turmoil reveals the fundamental dilemma of prediction markets from another perspective: reality itself is often ambiguous, controversial, and ambiguous. Blockchain oracles, on the other hand, attempt to transform this vague reality into a binary determination of right and wrong, often fails.

For platforms like Polymarket, the real threat is not a single misjudgment, but the systemic problems exposed by these errors. If even a relatively intuitive question like whether Zelensky passed through the suit cannot be defined by consensus, then what dilemma will the more complex event verification face? This is a question that all participants in the prediction market ecosystem should seriously think about. Until the data credibility crisis is resolved, the sustainability of this industry will always be a question mark.