Resolution criteria

This market resolves YES if a battery fire at a data center causes a major app outage in 2026. A "major app outage" is defined as a service disruption affecting millions of users across multiple applications or platforms, lasting at least 1 hour, and directly attributed to a battery fire incident. Resolution will be based on reports from major news outlets (Reuters, Bloomberg, AP, BBC, etc.) or official statements from affected companies confirming the battery fire as the root cause. If the cause is disputed or unconfirmed by year-end 2026, the market resolves NO.

Background

A lithium-ion battery fire at a South Korean data center caused the KakaoTalk outage in 2022, disabling multiple services including banking, payment, and travel apps used by millions. More recently, South Korea's National Information Resources Service (NIRS) data center suffered a catastrophic fire in September 2025 that started with a lithium-ion battery thermal event. Lithium-ion batteries are expected to account for 38.5% of the data-center battery market by 2025, up from 15% in 2020, making such incidents increasingly relevant as adoption grows.

Considerations

Lithium-ion batteries burn hotter than lead-acid batteries, and if the battery-containment unit is damaged, they don't react well with oxygen or water. Safety regulations surrounding battery energy storage systems regarding thermal management and runaway prevention remain somewhat lacking, with fragmentary regulations from region to region. While the failure rate dropped by 98% from 2018 to 2024 as lessons learned from early failures have been incorporated into latest designs, the increasing deployment of lithium-ion systems in critical infrastructure means the absolute number of potential incidents could remain significant.