More than $600 million was traded in Polymarket election markets after the Ethiopian and Romanian races were effectively decided, according to a WIRED investigation published October 15, 2026. The activity is suspicious and consistent with wash trading or “activity farming,” but the available evidence does not identify the traders or prove that every flagged transaction was illegal manipulation.
What happened after the results were already clear
Prediction markets are designed to aggregate information before an outcome is known. In the two cases examined by WIRED, substantial trading continued after the practical uncertainty had largely disappeared. Most of that activity was associated with candidates who ultimately lost rather than with the winners.
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The combined reported volume across the Ethiopian and Romanian markets exceeded $600 million. That figure is a platform activity measure, not a finding that $600 million of new capital was economically risked in the ordinary sense. Repeated transactions, account-to-account loops, and the way blockchain shares are created and destroyed can all make headline volume larger than genuine exposure.
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The Ethiopian market: $285 million with almost no apparent economic change
The election result
Abiy Ahmed’s Prosperity Party won 438 parliamentary seats, while the closest competitor won 13. Only $173,000 was wagered on Ahmed winning. More than $41 million, however, was traded on chief of staff Shimelis Abdisa. Total volume in the Ethiopian market exceeded $285 million, according to WIRED’s 2026 reporting.
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What the trade loops showed
About $284 million of the Ethiopian volume came from pairs of accounts repeatedly buying and selling with each other. 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 sequence in which two accounts rapidly exchange positions, finish roughly where they started, and generate large gross volume is different from a trader changing a market view after receiving new information. It can create the appearance of liquidity and demand without materially changing who bears the risk.
Romania became a “zombie market”
Romania’s original 2024 election was canceled and a new race was held. Polymarket nevertheless kept the old election market open. Rajiv Sethi, a Barnard College economics professor who studies prediction markets, called markets that remain active after their meaningful event has passed “zombie market[s].”
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Sethi’s algorithm found 99.6 percent wash trading in certain weeks of the Romanian market. That percentage applies to the weeks and activity covered by his analysis; it should not be read as a claim that every transaction in the entire market was definitively wash trading.
Was this wash trading or reward farming?
Wash trading is repeated buying and selling that makes activity look substantial while money and economic exposure largely move back and forth between connected participants. It is prohibited by Polymarket’s terms and banned on regulated U.S. financial exchanges.
WIRED reported that MSR Decode considered “activity farming” the most likely explanation for the Ethiopian pattern. In this scenario, traders create volume to qualify for a possible future reward, such as a token allocation, rather than to profit from a forecast. Andre Guettler, director of Ulm University’s Institute of Strategic Management and Finance, described the patterns as “textbook examples on how market participants farm a potential airdrop.”
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That remains an interpretation of behavior, not proof of motive. Wallet identities are unknown, and apparent wash trading is not always conclusive from public transaction data alone. The strongest defensible description is that the trades were apparently coordinated and consistent with wash trading or activity farming.
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| Market | What happened after the outcome | Observed pattern |
|---|---|---|
| Ethiopia | Trading continued after the parliamentary result was effectively settled; the Prosperity Party won 438 seats versus 13 for the closest competitor. | More than $285 million in total volume; about $284 million attributed to repeatedly interacting account pairs; more than 38,000 analyzed loops, with over 98% ending at neither a gain nor a loss and a nine-second median holding time. |
| Romania | The 2024 election was canceled, a new race was held, and the old Polymarket market remained open. | Sethi’s analysis found 99.6% wash trading in certain weeks. |
Why the $600 million headline needs qualification
On-chain prediction-market accounting can count more than straightforward buy-and-sell turnover. A 2026 transaction-level study by Kwok Ping Tsang and Zichao Yang separated share minting, burning, and trading. For a Trump market in October, it measured $391 million of turnover compared with $958 million in naive volume.
This does not erase the reported Ethiopian and Romanian activity. It means readers should ask which definition of volume is being used, whether newly minted or burned shares are included, and whether the statistic measures gross transactions or corrected economic turnover. A large number can therefore indicate intense contract activity without representing an equally large amount of independent money at risk.
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Polymarket’s response
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 addresses account access, but it does not publicly establish who controlled the wallets or what incentive drove the trades.
Can Polymarket election volume be trusted?
Volume is useful as a description of transactions, not as a stand-alone measure of information quality, trader conviction, or real-world probability. For a resolved or effectively resolved market, readers should examine:
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- Whether activity was concentrated in the winner or in candidates who lost.
- Whether the same wallets repeatedly traded with one another.
- How long positions were held and whether participants ended with meaningful gains or losses.
- Whether the market stayed open after its resolution conditions had effectively been met.
- Whether the reported total is naive on-chain volume or turnover corrected for share minting and burning.
Polymarket Data says it aggregates public information from Polymarket US and Polymarket International, including U.S. daily market reports, time-and-sales reports, and APIs. It describes Polymarket US as CFTC-regulated and Polymarket International as a blockchain-based decentralized-finance protocol. Jurisdiction and availability restrictions apply, so data from one venue should not automatically be treated as evidence about the other.
What the findings mean for prediction markets
The Ethiopian and Romanian examples expose a structural weakness: a market can continue producing impressive volume after its informational purpose has ended. If incentives reward transaction counts, participants may have a reason to manufacture activity even when no one is learning anything about the election.
That does not make every post-election trade fraudulent. Hedging, settlement disputes, technical delays, and attempts to close positions can produce legitimate transactions. But rapid reciprocal trades, near-zero net results, and an abandoned event market left open are warning signs that deserve investigation rather than being presented as evidence of broad public confidence.
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