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More than $600 million changed hands in two Polymarket election markets after the outcomes were effectively decided, according to a WIRED investigation published October 15, 2026. The trading patterns were highly unusual: much of the volume involved candidates who had lost, rapid back-and-forth transactions between the same account pairs, and markets that remained open after the event they described was no longer in doubt.
That evidence is consistent with wash trading or “activity farming,” in which traders create turnover to qualify for a possible reward rather than to express a genuine political forecast. It does not establish that every flagged trade was illegal or identify the people behind the wallets.
What happened after the elections
The activity occurred in Polymarket’s global, offshore election markets. In a normal prediction market, trading should concentrate before the result is known and then fall away once the outcome is settled or unmistakable. In these cases, trading continued at extraordinary levels after that point.
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The two markets were the Ethiopian parliamentary election and a Romanian presidential election market tied to a race that was later canceled. Together, they generated more than $600 million in reported post-outcome trading volume.
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Why the Ethiopian market looked abnormal
Ethiopia’s result was not close. Abiy Ahmed’s Prosperity Party won 438 parliamentary seats, while the nearest competitor won 13. Yet only about $173,000 was wagered on Ahmed winning. More than $41 million was traded on his chief of staff, Shimelis Abdisa, despite Abdisa not being the winner. Total volume in the Ethiopian market exceeded $285 million.
The concentration was not simply a case of many independent traders disagreeing about the result. About $284 million of the Ethiopian volume came from pairs of accounts that repeatedly bought and sold with one another, according to analysis cited by WIRED.
What the trade loops reveal
MSR Decode examined more than 38,000 post-election trade loops. Over 98 percent ended with neither side gaining or losing, and the median holding time was nine seconds. A trader briefly bought shares, transferred the position through a matching sale, and repeated the process rather than carrying meaningful exposure to the election outcome.
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That pattern matters because genuine information trading normally involves a change in risk: one participant believes the market price is wrong and accepts the possibility of a profit or loss. Near-zero net results, extremely short holding periods and repeated interaction between the same wallets are instead signals of manufactured turnover.
MSR Decode considered “activity farming” the most likely explanation for the Ethiopian behavior. The term describes trading designed to inflate a user’s activity metrics in the hope of receiving a future benefit, such as a token allocation or other platform reward. Andre Guettler of Ulm University called the pattern a “textbook” way to farm a potential airdrop. That is an analytical interpretation, not proof of the traders’ motive.
Why Romania became a “zombie market”
Romania presents a different route to the same problem. The original 2024 election was canceled, and a new race was held, but Polymarket kept the old market open. With the event described by the contract no longer proceeding as originally expected, the market could continue accepting transactions without serving its ordinary forecasting purpose.
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Economist Rajiv Sethi described markets left open after their event as “zombie markets.” His algorithm found that 99.6 percent of trading in certain weeks of the Romanian market was wash trading. That figure applies to the specified weeks and algorithmic classification; it is not a claim that every transaction over the market’s entire life was definitively fraudulent.
What “wash trading” means in this case
Wash trading is a sequence of buys and sells that creates the appearance of liquidity or demand while money and economic exposure largely circulate between coordinated parties. It is prohibited by Polymarket’s terms and banned on regulated U.S. financial exchanges.
The available evidence supports careful descriptions such as “suspicious,” “apparently coordinated” and “consistent with wash trading.” Wallet identities remain unknown, and apparent loops are not automatically conclusive proof of illegal manipulation. A strategy can produce the same surface pattern for reasons that are not fully visible on-chain, although the scale and regularity reported here make ordinary forecasting an implausible explanation.
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How these markets differ from ordinary prediction trading
| Diagnostic | Information-driven trading | Ethiopian and Romanian observations |
|---|---|---|
| Timing | Activity is concentrated while the result is uncertain and declines after resolution. | Heavy trading continued after the races were effectively decided; the Romanian contract remained open after cancellation. |
| Candidate concentration | Volume generally reflects competing views about plausible outcomes. | Large amounts were attached to losing or no-longer-relevant candidates and contracts. |
| Counterparties | Orders come from a broad, changing set of participants. | About $284 million in Ethiopia came from repeatedly interacting account pairs. |
| Holding time | Positions are held long enough for information or price changes to matter. | The median post-election loop lasted nine seconds. |
| Net result | Participants accept differing profits and losses. | More than 98 percent of analyzed loops ended with neither side gaining or losing. |
| Volume measurement | Turnover is calculated from actual changes in tradable exposure. | Naive on-chain totals can be inflated by share minting and burning. |
Can Polymarket’s volume numbers be trusted?
Volume should be treated as a measurement that requires a methodology, not as a direct count of money risked by independent traders. A 2026 transaction-level study by Kwok Ping Tsang and Zichao Yang showed why: share minting and burning can make simple on-chain sums overstate turnover. For an October Trump market, the study measured $391 million of corrected turnover versus $958 million of naive volume.
This accounting issue is separate from suspected wash trading. A market can have inflated totals because its token mechanics are counted incorrectly, because coordinated traders recycle positions, or because both effects occur at once. Readers comparing markets should ask whether a figure is raw on-chain volume, corrected turnover, or a platform-reported statistic, and what transactions the calculation includes.
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Shana Bautista, Polymarket’s head of global intelligence and investigations, said the company “immediately flagged this activity, investigated, and blocked the accounts from trading.” The statement indicates enforcement action against accounts, but it does not publicly identify the wallet owners or disclose the full detection criteria.
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The jurisdiction also matters. Polymarket Data says it aggregates public information from Polymarket US and Polymarket International. Its descriptions identify Polymarket US as CFTC-regulated and Polymarket International as a blockchain-based decentralized-finance protocol, with availability and jurisdiction restrictions. The election activity described in the investigation concerns the global offshore platform, so readers should not assume that rules or surveillance applied to the U.S. product are identical.
What the findings mean for readers
Large post-election volume is not evidence that a market correctly forecast anything. In these examples, the most informative signals are the timing after the outcome, concentration in losing candidates, repeated wallet-to-wallet loops, nine-second median holding periods, and near-zero net results. Those indicators point toward manufactured activity rather than a crowd discovering new information.
At the same time, the evidence has limits. Public wallet data does not reveal identities, intent or off-chain agreements, and algorithmic labels such as “wash trading” depend on the rules used to classify transactions. The strongest defensible conclusion is therefore that substantial portions of the Ethiopian and Romanian activity were suspicious and consistent with wash trading or activity farming, while a definitive legal finding would require evidence beyond the transaction patterns reported so far.
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