2024 in Review: Truth, Trust, and Innovation at UMA Protocol
Truth is the foundation of trust, and in 2024, UMA Protocol advanced its mission of bringing reliable data to blockchains. From securing crosschain bridges to powering prediction markets and revolutionizing DAO governance, our optimistic oracle has become the backbone of Web3's most innovative projects.
This year, UMA’s optimistic oracle processed over 34,000 assertions with a remarkable 98.6% resolution rate without disputes – but numbers tell only part of our story. With Oval, we pioneered new frontiers in MEV capture, and we transformed DAO governance with oSnap. TLDR, we’ve established ourselves as the standard for bringing truth onchain.
Let’s go down memory lane to revisit all that made 2024 incredible, impressive, and inspiring.
UMA's Optimistic Oracle: The Foundation of Web3 Truth
At its core, UMA's optimistic oracle (OO) solves a fundamental blockchain challenge: bringing real-world information onchain in a decentralized, secure, and scalable way. While other oracles focus on price feeds, the OO specializes in verifying intersubjective truth - from geopolitical outcomes to complex financial data - by utilizing an innovative "truth by consensus" mechanism.
The OO is the first successful application of the Schelling Coin mechanism described in Ethereum’s whitepaper. This unique capability has made the OO the foundation of InfoFi, starting with prediction markets, where we've become the industry standard. 2024 demonstrated this decisively: when Polymarket needed to secure over $3.6 billion in market volume during the U.S. presidential election, they relied on UMA's OO.
Key Achievements in 2024:
UMA’s OO resolved the largest prediction market of the year, the U.S. presidential election, which had over $3.6 billion in market volume on Polymarket without any issues.
The OO successfully secured over 500 other high-stakes election markets during the peak period of the U.S. presidential elections.
The OO secured almost $2 billion in value onchain.
The OO now secures Vega Protocol’s Points Markets, highlighting the OO’s flexibility and ability to support novel DeFi experimentation.
The Optimistic Oracle expanded to Base, a move that gives builders on the fast-growing network a flexible oracle system to build on and that also signals UMA’s growing presence in the Layer 2 ecosystem.
The OO now secures Bookies, a sports-focused prediction market built on Base
We also expanded the availability of the OO to the Blast network, starting with an integration with Predict.Fun.
Powered innovative new use cases like Infinite Games protocol (can’t find a source for this)
System Integrity Improvements:
Grew to almost 2,000 unique validator addresses, strengthening our decentralization
Processed 34,000 assertions with a remarkably low 1.4% dispute rate
Improved the reveal-to-commit ratio to 91% (up from 85%)
Secured 868 critical votes, including 500 for Polymarket
These metrics tell a powerful story: our economic incentives work as designed, making truth-telling not just the right choice but the profitable one as well. As Web3 continues to evolve, UMA's OO stands as the go-to solution for bringing truth onchain.
As Web3 expands beyond DeFi into broader information markets, UMA's OO is perfectly positioned as the foundation for this next wave of innovation. Whether it's prediction markets or novel DeFi experiments, protocols that need verified truth choose UMA. Let’s just say 2025 is going to be a very exciting year for new OO use cases.
oSnap: Making DAO Governance More Accessible and Efficient
2024 marked a significant milestone for oSnap, as it evolved from an innovative experiment to a standard feature in the Snapshot ecosystem. By bridging the gap between offchain voting and onchain execution, oSnap has transformed how DAOs operate, automating governance processes and making it more accessible, efficient, and secure for everyone.
Beyond metrics, oSnap's true impact lies in its seamless integration with Snapshot and Safe. What was once buried in settings is now a standard feature, automatically available when opening a new Snapshot space. This shift represents our vision of governance tools as a public service to the wider ecosystem - making powerful capabilities available without unnecessary friction or cost.
The 2024 numbers tell an impressive story of adoption and impact:
Key Achievements in 2024:
$47,767 significant gas savings for DAOs and voters
Integration with 101 safes across multiple chains
173 executed proposals
Over $75 million in transaction volume processed
More than $1 billion ($1,004,519,541) in total value secured (TVS)
Major DAOs onboarded for deeper integration into Snapshot's core interface - including SuperRare, Gitcoin, Arbitrum DAO, Nexus Mutual, Tenderly, and Developer DAO,
oSnap Improvements:
Safe Transaction Integration: Save time by building transactions in Safe and transferring them to oSnap’s UI on Snapshot as JSON files.
Multi-Safe and Mult-Chain Deployment: Vote on Snapshot and execute transactions from any Safes on any chains.
In-App Simulation with Tenderly: Test transactions before publishing them on Snapshot with Tenderly—straight from Snapshot’s UI.
oSnap’s enhanced capabilities with Safe and Tenderly positioning it as a foundational ecosystem service, reflecting our commitment to building reliable infrastructure for Web3.
As we look ahead, oSnap continues to exemplify UMA's commitment to building essential infrastructure for Web3. By making governance more accessible and efficient, we're helping DAOs focus on what matters most: making decisions that move their communities forward.
Oval: Transforming Value Capture in DeFi
UMA is well-known for its optimistic oracle (OO), which secures and brings reliable data onchain. What you might have forgotten is that in January 2024, we launched Oval, the first oracle value aggregation layer designed to help lending protocols capture up to 90% of their Oracle Extractable Value (OEV).
Initially positioned for deployment on major lending protocols, Oval faced strategic resistance from established oracle providers who - interestingly enough - would later launch remarkably similar solutions under different names. While this sabotage limited Oval's direct adoption, its launch achieved something more significant: it sparked a crucial industry-wide conversation about OEV capture and its importance for protocol sustainability.
For protocols like Aave and Compound, which have each processed over $1 billion in liquidations, Oval offered a path to transform liquidations from a cost center into a revenue stream.
Through our work on Oval, we:
Successfully deployed on Morpho and supported Redstone price feeds
Demonstrated proof-of-concept with 28 live liquidations
Captured approximately $8,502 actual dollars in test liquidations, proving the mechanism's viability
Most importantly, we drove industry awareness about OEV leakage in DeFi
Oval’s true impact extends beyond its technical implementation. By highlighting how lending protocols were bleeding value through liquidations, we pushed the entire DeFi ecosystem to confront this challenge.
The conversation has now led others to develop their own OEV capture mechanisms (with a surprisingly familiar concept), validating our early vision: OEV capture isn't just a feature—it's a necessity for sustainable DeFi protocols.
We consider Oval a public good for protocols seeking to capture their OEV, but its lasting legacy is in changing how the industry thinks about value capture in DeFi liquidations.
Final Words
2024 marked a pivotal year for UMA. Through Oval, we sparked crucial conversations about value capture in DeFi. With oSnap, we made DAO governance more accessible, efficient, and secure. Our optimistic oracle continued to prove why it's the most trusted solution for bringing truth onchain.
As we look toward 2025, we're excited about the next evolution of our oracle technology [watch out]. Whether it's prediction markets, DAO governance, or emerging Web3 use cases, UMA remains committed to our mission: to ensure that truth remains the foundation of decentralized systems.
