Polymarket Replaces Snapshot Settlement After $8.2M Manipulation Study

Polymarket said it will replace single-point snapshot settlement for its crypto “up/down” markets with Chainlink-computed TWAP resolution, effective 2026-08-07T00:00:00Z. The update introduces a 30‑second TWAP for 5‑minute markets and a 60‑second TWAP for 15‑minute and 4‑hour markets, and allocates $1,000,000 in liquidity rewards across affected markets during August, according to a notice reported by KuCoin.

Polymarket’s documentation says Chainlink Data Streams mainnet TWAP feeds (30s and 60s) are available and that its Real‑Time Data Stream (RTDS), scheduled to launch 2026-08-04, will relay Chainlink-computed mainnet TWAP updates for settlement and integrations (Polymarket docs).

The shift follows weeks of scrutiny after a working paper by Stanford and SMU researchers analyzed Polymarket’s five‑minute Bitcoin contract and identified a manipulation footprint: 821 trader wallets captured an estimated $8.2 million in the manipulated cycles while retail liquidity traders bore most of the losses (arXiv). Bloomberg Law summarized the paper’s finding of repeated one‑sided Binance spot bursts in the final seconds before five‑minute bet closes.

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