Polymarket's Four Mistakes

Polymarket made four mistakes in total.

The First Mistake

When creating the market, Polymarket did not use correct terminology for "deploy" and "active duty." Active duty refers to activation, which can place Guard members into service ahead of a future deployment. Deployment, by contrast, refers to assigning troops to a specific mission.

The Second Mistake

In the first clarification, Polymarket did not correct this error and instead doubled down on the phrase "active deployment." The added condition "regardless of whether the troops are engaged in public-facing operations" did not resolve the underlying problem. Troops can only engage in any operations, public-facing or not, once they are deployed.

The Third Mistake

By launching the August 31 market, Polymarket effectively signaled that no qualifying event had occurred before that date, including the White House memo.

The Fourth Mistake

In its final clarification, Polymarket again referred to "active deployment" rather than "active duty." The August 31 market was resolved to "Yes" despite being dead-on-arrival, and the date of the memo was misstated, further confusing the timeline.

Coming Up

In the final chapter, we look at how Polymarket could move forward from this mistake.