Cryptoupdated 1h ago2 min read
Polymarket Suspends Trading After Third-Party Provider Breach, Major API Outage
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Polymarket suspended trading after a third-party provider breach caused a major outage. Polymarket pledged to fully reimburse all affected traders.
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6 outlets told this the same way.
Polymarket halts, funds drained
Polymarket suspended trading on its international platform Thursday after it reported that one of its third party providers was compromised and that its Predictions Trading API had experienced a “major outage,” forcing the platform into “cancel-only” mode.
Polymarket told users that “anyone who has been impacted will be made whole,” while users on Polymarket’s Discord channel reported that their wallets had been drained.
Polymarket halted trading for nearly an hour, and trading resumed at 3 p.m. ET after nearly an hour offline.
The Block reported that “some $2.65 million in cryptocurrencies had been siphoned from Polymarket users’ wallets,” citing data from Arkham, while a Polymarket representative declined to comment on that figure.
Polymarket said it referred the incident to British law enforcement authorities and said the attack appeared to emanate from the United Kingdom.
DebugBear link and response
Hackers gained access to the funds via software from DebugBear, a web analytics and website performance tool, and DebugBear said on X that it was experiencing an “ongoing security incident” at around 2 p.m. ET Thursday.
Polymarket said it identified and fixed an issue affecting its international platform, Polymarket.com, and it added that it had temporarily halted trading “out of an abundance of caution.”
The Business Journal said Polymarket halted trading “out of an abundance of caution” after identifying and fixing the issue affecting its international platform, and it said the pause lasted about an hour.
A person familiar with the matter told CNBC that the issue stemmed from a hack of DebugBear and that Polymarket referred the matter to U.K. law enforcement.
DebugBear advised customers using its real user monitoring product to remove its embed code from their websites.
Reimbursement, scope, and scrutiny
Polymarket promised to fully reimburse affected traders, and it posted on X, “We’ll make this right and are fully reimbursing all affected traders,” after trading resumed. Polymarket has not published a loss figure or a count of affected users, and estimates from blockchain analytics firms were similar but not identical. Two firms, Betting Intelligence and Polysights, told CNBC that an account withdrew at least $2.7 million across 710 wallets, while Bubblemaps estimated that about 700 users were affected and about $2.7 million was stolen.
Polymarket’s U.S.-based platform did not appear to be affected by the breach, and Polymarket was valued at $21 billion in September after a group of investors led by Donald Trump Jr. invested $1 billion in the platform. Polymarket, along with rival Kalshi, faced an intense, multimillion-dollar battle between U.S. states and the Trump administration over who gets to regulate prediction-market betting.