On-chain tracking of Polymarket's Khamenei betting operations: 521 addresses precisely positioned, a few entities precisely targeted.

Author: Frank, PANews

In the early hours of February 28, 2026, the global geopolitical landscape was shaken as the conflict between the US and Iran reignited. This black swan event, which altered the geopolitical order, triggered a violent chain reaction in the physical world and, similarly, a chaotic vortex of capital in the digital world.

On the decentralized prediction market Polymarket, a contract titled "Will Khamenei step down as Iran's Supreme Leader before February 28?" attracted a total trading volume of $81.63 million. As the physical death of Khamenei was gradually confirmed, the settlement of this massive smart contract became severely paralyzed and controversial. Two "Yes" proposals were rejected, forcing the market to enter the final review stage via the UMA oracle. This controversy has once again sparked reflection on the judgment of prediction markets. Simultaneously, several addresses have been exposed as potentially insider accounts that amassed profits exceeding one million dollars.

PANews conducted in-depth tracking and multi-dimensional analysis of the on-chain transaction data of this betting platform. In this bet, it was found that 521 suspicious profit-making addresses frantically built positions during a specific vacuum period. Among them, 62 addresses only bet on the situation in Iran once on the entire platform, and some wallets gambled tens of thousands of times the return with a mere three hundred dollars.

Beyond the border of the artillery fire, some were arguing endlessly, while others were making a fortune.

A deadly time zone black hole and an $81.6 million settlement deadlock

To understand the underlying mysteries behind the data, we must first clarify the fatal contradictions in this dispute over rules.

According to Polymarket's official rules document, the market settles for Yes if Khamenei resigns, is detained, loses his position, or is prevented from performing his duties.

After reviewing the case, PANews found that the main reasons why this contract was subject to two disputes are as follows.

1. The controversy over the time discrepancy:

The first point of contention lies in the significant discrepancy in the timeline. The smart contract set a deadline of 11:59 PM Eastern Time on February 28th. US President Trump explicitly announced Khamenei's death on social media at 6:12 PM that same day, well within the deadline. However, Iranian officials, for reasons of maintaining stability, initially vehemently denied the news, only officially announcing the death on state television in the early hours of March 1st, after the contract's deadline. This led to a dispute between the "YES" and "NO" sides regarding whether the events occurred within the deadline period.

2. Controversy regarding semantic interpretation:

Besides the controversy over the timing, there is also controversy surrounding the ambiguous interpretation of the contract. The contract rules state that the market settlement is "Yes" if Khamenei resigns, is detained, loses his position, or is prevented from performing his duties. Perhaps to avoid legal pressure, the rules deliberately avoid the words "death" or "assassination," and it is precisely this linguistic compromise that sows the seeds of future problems. The "No" camp argues that since the contract text deliberately excludes the word "death," it means that death does not automatically equate to resignation unless a formal power transfer process is initiated.

Faced with the influx of massive funds, Polymarket took the unusual step of centralized intervention, urgently adding a vague statement to its page indicating that the market might remain open until a consensus was reached. This move was immediately met with fierce criticism from the community, seen as a violation of the core tenet of the immutability of smart contracts.

The fate of this betting platform has now been handed over to the underlying UMA decentralized oracle for final review. If the final result is determined to be NO, it will create the biggest prediction market judgment blunder ever.

521 Ghost Accounts: The 100% Winning Rate of the "Prophet" and Position Building During Vacuum Periods

Amid the controversy, a group of insiders has once again quietly begun to make their moves.

By capturing all on-chain transaction data from Polymarket, PANews has set up eight suspicious rating criteria for all profitable addresses, including early buy-in winners, trading only in the winners' direction, precise targeting, concentrated trading time, large holdings to settlement, high return on investment, extremely short active period, and large absolute profits.

After systematic screening, PANews analysis revealed 521 addresses exhibiting highly suspicious trading behavior. Further investigation showed that 62 addresses had no other activity records throughout the entire Polymarket lifecycle, trading exclusively on Iranian and Khamenei-related platforms. Additionally, 95 addresses had more than half of their trading activity focused on Iranian platforms.

After considering various unusual trading conditions, PANews discovered that the top 15 addresses alone made a total profit of $900,000 on this trading platform.

From a timeline perspective, these stock-building activities exhibit a chillingly accurate prediction.

The first unusual window appeared between January 14th and 17th, in the early stages of the market's creation. At that time, a large number of highly suspicious addresses concentrated their purchases of YES shares at rock-bottom prices of $0.03 to $0.05, seemingly preparing for the upheaval that would occur nearly two months later. Notably, the second unusual window occurred between February 27th and 28th, in the final hours before the settlement date and the initial explosive news. Dozens of "one-off wallets," existing for less than a day or two, flooded in like ghosts, executing brutal buy-to-redemption operations; some even completed all their assets within the same block in just a few minutes.

From $300 to $40,000: On-chain data reconstructs the whale's harvesting path

The data summary is just the outline of this puzzle. When we zoom in, the on-chain operations of these whales and "prophets" become even more blatant.

PANews selected a representative address, 0x88c4919d, with a suspiciousness score of 130 out of 10. This address participated in only 10 markets across its platform, all related to the Iranian situation. In Khamenei's trading platform, this address completed all fifteen trades in just one and a half hours, exclusively buying in the "YES" direction. Interestingly, its largest profit source wasn't this controversial trading platform, but rather a staggering $266,000 in the "Will the US strike Iran before the end of March" trading platform. This operational pattern indicates that this is not an ordinary retail investor, but a highly professional institutional speculator specializing in Iranian political intelligence.

Let's look at a more typical example of a "one-off wallet." The address starting with 0x37545ab7 was just opened on February 27th and only made two transactions across the entire platform. It bought YES with a mere $51 and redeemed the full $3911 just two days later, achieving a return of 7569%. Opening an account, entering the market, withdrawing, and disappearing—the actions were clean and efficient, resembling a premeditated, targeted scam.

Lurking in second place on the profit leaderboard, address 0x2e29fc8a raked in a total profit of $241,000. Throughout its entire platform career, it only touched two relevant markets, turning a principal of $6,202 into over $100,000 in a short two-day period. However, this address had previously lost $40,000 in Khamenei's earlier betting activity ending in January, demonstrating that such intelligence-driven decisions are not always guaranteed to succeed.

A systematic hunt led by a very small number of entities

Furthermore, PANews, after cross-referencing the data from three dimensions—number of common markets, consistency of direction, and time overlap—found that the large number of trading accounts involved are likely just a network of chips controlled by a few giants.

Among these more than 500 suspicious sources, at least three highly correlated address clusters that are cooperating can be clearly identified.

Take one highly active address cluster as an example; it contains four frequently linked addresses. They move in tandem across 20-70 common markets, cross-referencing each other with astonishingly synchronized movements. In another identified batch trading pair, two addresses not only trade in the exact same direction but also simultaneously place bets on as many as 150 identical derivative orders. With such extreme overlap, we can be highly certain that these two addresses are backed by the same program and the same entity.

To conceal the movement of funds and mitigate risk, some entities have meticulously constructed decentralized networks consisting of dozens of small bets of tens of dollars each. This means that the insider trading teams actually hidden behind these 521 addresses may ultimately be controlled by only a few entities.

A report released a week ago only accused six suspicious wallets of stealing a little over one million dollars. However, when PANews broadened its perspective and scanned the more than 500 address maps covering the entire network, it had to admit that this was no longer speculation by a few lucky individuals, but a systematic hunt for ordinary liquidity providers driven by insider information.

When $332 can balloon to $40,000 in a few blocks, and when 62 wallets on a platform with thousands of categories single-mindedly focus on the skies above Tehran, on-chain data doesn't lie. These suspicious addresses, with returns tens of thousands of times higher, prove that when anonymity and geopolitical secrecy converge, so-called collective wisdom is nothing more than a fig leaf for a few monopolists to exploit retail investors. Respecting the market, honoring trends, and maintaining independent thinking and prudent judgment may be the only rule for everyone to survive in the decentralized frenzy.