The Debacle That Is Polymarket And Betting On Ukraine's President Wearing A Suit

At the center of a fiasco at Polymarket about Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s attire is a potentially existential crisis: Is the prediction market really a “source of truth?”

More than $145 million has been traded on the seemingly straightforward question: “Will Zelenskyy wear a suit before July?” But the market has been anything but straightforward. People who have bet both sides are convinced they’re right. And as of July 7, it still hasn’t been resolved, but it is due (maybe) to have a resolution by later today.

What’s going on, and what’s next for Polymarket?

The Zelenskyy suit market explained

Sometimes prediction markets offer all sorts of nonsense that few people trade. They are likely meant to be a novelty, or fodder for social media and news outlets.

Whether that was the intent for the Zelenskyy suit market or not, we probably won’t know. But at some point it became a real market with millions of dollars at stake.

Whether someone has worn a suit or not doesn’t sound terribly controversial on its face. But controversy came all the same. Why?

• Zelenskyy wore something at a NATO summit on June 24 that many people called a suit, but not everyone agreed it was indeed a suit.

• Polymarket did an incredibly poor job of defining what a “suit” is — in fact, it didn’t even make an attempt to do so.

• A meme — namely ongoing chatter about Zelenskyy’s clothing — becoming a market is a terrible idea.

On the market resolution criteria, here’s what Polymarket wrote:

This market will resolve to "Yes" if Volodymyr Zelenskyy is is photographed or videotaped wearing a suit between May 22 and June 30, 2025 ET. Otherwise, this market will resolve to "No".

For this market to resolve to "Yes" the images or video must be taken and released within this market's timeframe. The images or video must be authentic, not the result of artificial intelligence or video editing.

The resolution source will be a consensus of credible reporting.

The amount of care put into the criteria can be seen throughout the language here, from the grammar (“is is photographed”) to the lack of definition of what “a consensus of credible reporting” consists of.

Polymarket has a recent deal with X/Twitter, and here’s what its AI, Grok, has to say (in functionality included at Polymarket’s site):

In the past week, the market concerning whether the Ukrainian President will be photographed or videotaped in a suit by the end of June 2025 has seen significant attention due to recent events. News reports indicate that he attended a NATO summit in The Hague on June 24, 2025, wearing what many describe as a suit, a departure from his usual military-style attire. This has sparked intense debate among bettors, with millions at stake, over whether his outfit qualifies as a suit. Despite this, the "No" outcome remains dominant at 98.2%, reflecting skepticism or unresolved criteria disputes.

So what did Zelenskyy wear?

This is the $64,000 question. Here’s a picture of him in the suit/not in a suit:

Even Derek Guy, a Twitter/X personality who literally is an expert on menswear, acknowledges that there are arguments both ways. He broke everything down in the Polymarket suit market because so many people asked:

The Polymarket question was poorly worded. They should have set strict parameters on what a suit means. Whether you think Zelenskyy wore a suit depends on whether you are following the technical definition or the social expectation. (Also prob depends on your bets) …

If I were writing an article about Zelenskyy's dress, I would call it a suit because it's the shortest, easiest way to describe his outfit without getting into the history of men's tailoring. But I would also recognize this is not what most people recognize as a suit.

At core, there are decent arguments either way on whether the outfit was a suit. So it’s hard to resolve the market on those criteria. That leads many, including me, to the “consensus of credible reporting” language. Can that get us to a more straightforward answer?

Again, there is probably an argument both ways. While you can find examples of what he wore being called a suit, but you can also find descriptions of his attire that refer to it in other terms. Here are some of the former:

• Zelensky ditches T-shirt for a suit for sit-down meeting with President Trump (NY Post)

• Zelensky Suits Up for NATO Summit (Kyiv Post)

• Zelenskiy opts for more formal, calibrated wardrobe ahead of Trump meeting (Reuters): Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has retuned his wardrobe since a disastrous Oval Office meeting with Donald Trump in February, switching his typical khaki military-style tee-shirts and long-sleeved tops for more formal, but still rugged, black suit-style jackets and shirts.

The New York Times called it a “suit jacket.” There are more credible outlets calling it a suit, and some referring to it in some other way. I can also find a variety of what I would call “less-reputable” sources saying his attire is a suit. Is that a “consensus?” God only knows.

Adding to the controversy: A Polymarket-“affiliated” account on Twitter called Polymarket Intel posted a video on June 25 with the words “President Zelenskyy in a suit last night.” At some point after the tweet, the account’s bio was updated to say “community ran.”

So how will the market be resolved?

Here’s what Polymarket tells users hoping to see how the market is resolving:

We’ll go straight to the source. Here’s what Polymarket tells users:

How Are Prediction Markets Resolved?

Markets are resolved by the UMA Optimistic Oracle, a smart-contract based optimistic oracle. ​

Once in the verification process, UMA will review the transaction to ensure it was proposed correctly. If approved, you will receive your bond amount back in your wallet plus the reward. If not approved, it will enter Uma’s dispute resolution process, which is described in detail here.

Polymarket then talks about disputes; this is where the market sits now:

Once a market is proposed for resolution it goes into a challenge period of 2 hours.

If no one challenges the proposal the resolution is deemed valid and the proposer receives their bond back plus the reward.

During the 2-hour challenge period, anyone may dispute the proposal on the UMA dapp by posting a challenge bond of the same amount as the proposer bond (usually $750).

This begins the debate period of 24-48 hours (votes happen every other day and there will always be at least 24 hours for discussion). Anyone wishing to contribute evidence to the discussion can do so in the Uma Discord server in the #evidence-rationale and #voting-discussion channels.

After the debate period, Uma token holders vote (this process takes approximately 48 hours) and one of four outcomes happens:

The short answer of what can happen is 1. yes wins 2. no wins 3. it’s too early (not in play here); or 4. unknown/50-50:

This (rarely used) outcome is for events where none of the other options are appropriate. In this case the market price resolves to 50 yes and 50 no. Disputer receives their bond back plus half the proposer’s bond as a bounty. Proposer loses their bond.

Polymarket = source of truth?

The problem for Polymarket is they created a silly market with lazy criteria for resolution. Both of those things are a recipe for trouble in a yes-no market with actual money on the line. (I’d also argue you also kind of get what you deserve if you bet on a dumb market with dumb rules and you end up losing.)

What is clear is this has riled people up:

• There are more than 24,000 comments on the market.

• There are various threads on X/Twitter (with lots of engagement) that are calling out Polymarket for the mess.

• You can also see discussion on the public UMA protocol Discord, which doesn’t necessarily consist of people actually voting on the resolution.

Markets should be easy to resolve. Disputes should be rare, in theory. If you don’t have clear resolution criteria, you probably shouldn’t be offering the market in the first place.

Now we’re into the UMA process; previous attempts to resolve the market have reportedly been blocked. There is also a decided lack of trust in that process from many corners and worries that the resolution is being manipulated by whales (aka large traders). That’s not far-fetched. That scenario played out for a resolution of a market on a Trump/Ukraine minerals deal in March:

The market about whether Ukraine would agree to a deal with the Trump Administration for rare earth minerals was supposed to resolve either when a deal was reached or by March 31, whichever came sooner. Instead, it appears that a whale with as much as five million governance tokens for the UMA oracle used by Polymarket was able to force through a premature “Yes” resolution that such a deal had been made.

We even had a crazy example just this week where a sports market resolved incorrectly. In Major League Baseball, the Houston Astros beat the Los Angeles Dodgers 18-1 on Saturday. But the market resolved to the Dodgers winning:

From a prediction markets trader on Twitter: “Broken bots (or malicious bots maybe!) verified the market for approval, and not a single human looked at it before it paid out.” Polymarket said Astros bettors did get paid after the bad resolution. But this shouldn’t even happen in the first place.

Yes, money is at stake. But at a higher level, Polymarket’s credibility is at stake. If Polymarket’s prediction market can’t obtain objective truth — or they can’t conduct every market with resolutions that people trust — that’s arguably a crisis for the platform. Polymarket likes to claim it’s the source of truth; can it continue to argue that no matter the outcome here?

It could also be much ado about nothing, and everything goes back to normal after the market resolves one way or the other. But this episode at Polymarket serves to create some skepticism about whether prediction markets — at least ones outside of real regulation — are the source of truth they claim to be.