Rich Fournier

holy fuck, a hair dryer at a Paris airport broke Polymarket weather markets & made someone $34,000 richer - polymarket was settling Paris temperature bets on a single Météo France sensor sitting near the Charles de Gaulle runway perimeter - basically unguarded - the guy bought the long-shot outcome (like "22°C" when everyone expected 18°C) for pennies, since nobody thought it'd hit - then he walked up to the probe and briefly heated the air around it with a portable heat source, spiking the reading just long enough to register as the daily max - temperature snapped back to normal in minutes, the market resolved in his favor, and he cashed out - twice, on April 6 and April 15, before Météo France caught on and filed charges hyperstitions.

Hey Panda, thanks for the response. I think there's definitely a lack of understanding on how powerful CL's infra is. I also agree that the market is shit atm. Less blockchain usage = less revenue. However, team members claim that CL generates "hundreds of millions in revenue". Big advocates too. If opening staking would "probably help a little bit", why are they not doing it? It's certainly not a regulation thing AFAIK, given Chainlink has increased staking caps in the past. Can there can be larger catalysts? Sure. But, why deliberately limiting access and value accrual for the vast majority of holders? Additionally, the mentioned revenue is not verifiable onchain, or at all. The inorganic sell pressure is indeed verifiable, which opens up questions about operational budget efficiency. If not too efficient, addressing it should be a priority during bear/slow markets. Personally, I am not sure how regulation is a hurdle for any of this. A lot of the hundreds of millions in revenue is said to come from offchain, regulated sources. So, why would disclosing it be limited by regulation? Finally, I think that transparency would go a long way. If the money is going towards growth initiatives, I don't think investors would complain about restricting revenue distribution during the growth phase. However, not knowing where the "hundreds of millions" worth of revenue is going to, and also not being able to access any of it, and even not knowing why they can't access it, can become pretty frustrating for many. TLDR: Market is shit, but I don't think that's the problem. The problem is lack of transparency, lack of revenue distribution, and potential operational budget inefficiencies that leads to big spikes of inorganic sell pressure. If any of this is objectively untrue, please do let me know, as my intention is not to misinform.