Library/The Ghosts of Polymarket: When Off-Chain Matches Meet On-Chain Reverts
MicrostructureResearch Paper

The Ghosts of Polymarket: When Off-Chain Matches Meet On-Chain Reverts

Yiming Shen, Yuhan Jin, Shuohan Wu, Yanlin Wang, Jiachi Chen·June 15, 2026·Academic Paper
polymarket's off-chain matching creates a $1.49 million loophole for traders to selectively invalidate orders

Why It's Worth Reading

Polymarket matches orders off-chain for speed but settles on-chain for finality. This paper identifies a consistency gap they call Ghost Fills — orders matched off-chain that fail during on-chain settlement. Across 1.95M reverted transactions, the authors document four attack vectors that let traders selectively invalidate orders, realizing $1.49M in profit with 24.3% of filled orders reverting during peak hours.

Some technical background helpful

Concepts

Platforms mentioned: Polymarket

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