Polymarket, a popular decentralized prediction market platform, suffered a serious cybersecurity incident, resulting in the theft of approximately $700,000 worth of POL tokens. Experts detected a targeted attack on the UMA CTF Adapter smart contract on the Polygon network, which serves as a bridge between the platform's internal markets and the decentralized UMA oracle. The hacker systematically withdrew approximately 5,000 tokens in tranches every 30 seconds, then quickly distributed the stolen digital assets to at least 15 controlled addresses.

The unauthorized leak was soon officially confirmed by analysts from the blockchain platform Bubblemaps, who urged the crypto community to temporarily suspend all activity on Polymarket. Security researchers determined that at least two specific platform addresses were compromised, and a few hours later, Polymarket's Head of Engineering, Shantikiran Chanal, disclosed the technical details of the incident. According to his statement, the incident was caused by a compromise of the private key of the internal transaction wallet, meaning the problem was localized solely at the access control level and was not related to any fundamental vulnerabilities in the platform's architecture or infrastructure. Chanal emphasized that the affected address was used exclusively for reward payouts, so the incident does not affect the validity of voting, does not threaten user deposits in USDC stablecoins, and does not disrupt the calculation of open positions, although the exact scope of the compromise remains to be determined.

This hack occurred amid a series of other major scandals related to Polymarket, which in recent months have actively drawn the attention of regulators and the media to insider trading on the platform. In April, for the first time in history, US law enforcement initiated a criminal prosecution for insider betting on blockchain forecasts, formally charging an active-duty US military service member for using classified information for personal gain. Furthermore, a recent independent investigation by The Wall Street Journal clearly demonstrated the platform's deep structural problems, proving that due to the dominance of professional traders and unscrupulous insiders, approximately 70% of ordinary users of the platform permanently lose their investments.