I feel like some users do this sort of thing around leagues seasons start time (midnight PT or 3 am in my timezone), perhaps not as visibly or deliberately. So I decided to try to raise awareness about it by making it obvious and very visible, including by creating this market.
I've artificially manufactured almost M93k in fake leagues profits for this new Season 30 (Oct 2025). These are not real profits, I've not gained a single mana through these trades. By trading against my own (no alts, just my own account) limit orders (big and badly priced) placed shortly before the season start, the profit gets recorded when they got filled less than a minute later in the new season. But there must be an offsetting loss on the other leg of the trade, you say correctly, if I'm trading against myself? Well, the loss is carried by my old self at the time of the limit placement a few seconds before the season started, and due to the overlapping random closing season period the closing season has not yet ended, so the profit also gets accounted in that season fully offsetting the limit order losses meaning zero impact in the closing season. The key thing is that the profitable leg gets recorded for both seasons, but the losing one only applies to the old season.
Here's the market transaction log, showing 4x YES limit orders (2x for each of the two options) for M25k each at 99% placed in the last minute before season start, and two NO buys right after season start bringing both options back down to 2% (their original stable probability):
Here's my Trades tab showing the shares bought and sold, the probability swings, and the times bracketing the start of the season (I highlighted the "bad" limits in red and the "good" trades in green):
(note there are two more YES limits for M25k each at 99% for the "bitcoin drops back down" option not shown in the screenshot above since I'd have to page next to display them)
Here's my initial Season 30 (October) standing leading Masters by an absurd amount:
And here's the profit details popup pane when you click on my name there, showing that only the two winning NO trades are getting counted for this season:
I don't see any rule or prohibition in the guidelines against this, except possibly the vague "loophole" one:
Users don’t maliciously take advantage of ambiguity, loopholes, and technicalities, to benefit themselves.
The only "benefit" is the new season profits/ranking. If it ends up in a prized rank (top 10) by the end of the season, then that prize is the only mana benefit. There's no real 93k mana profit generated during the month, no infinite exploit, it's just a glitch from the quirky leagues season accounting. You can see my profile profits chart and confirm there's no 90k spike anywhere.
The execution is quite simple, here made big and blunt by fully swinging a small market, but could easily be done more subtly by spreading it over several markets without swinging them as much to avoid detection. It does involve some risk, as any trader (or maybe a lucky bot) could catch me within that midnight minute and steal the badly priced limit order, saddling me with the big loss. In case of several markets the risk would be minimized by having a bot or script execute all the trades within a few seconds around midnight.
All this to say, I don't think it's a huge issue if people do it a little, just not as extreme as I've done here. Where to draw the line, and how to detect and prevent abuse of it, are interesting considerations to keep the leagues games fun and fair.
Anyway, feel free to add more answers. I might bet on these since there's not much subjectivity. Apologies to fellow Masters for any rank disruption this may cause. I do hope (and hereby formally request) that my fake profits get reversed. Any comments or suggestions are appreciated, particularly from @mods or admins.
Update 2025-10-03 (PST) (AI summary of creator comment): - For the answer "I'll get punished (any fine, ban, or restriction) despite not breaking any rules or guidelines": it will resolve YES if I receive any fine, ban, or restriction by Nov 1, and NO otherwise. The "despite" clause is commentary and does not condition the resolution.
Update 2025-10-03 (PST) (AI summary of creator comment): - For the bug bounty answer: it resolves YES if any bounty payment was sent to me at any time before Nov 1; a later retraction does not negate that it happened.
Interpreting "by Nov 1" as event-based: outcomes are judged on whether they occurred before the deadline, not their later status.
1,000People are also trading
@traders I wonder if it's ok to resolve this? I assume very small chances the scheduler for next season open glitches again. Also, I don't think I'll be testing this same method then. I think I'll just check the timestamps of the trades counting for each season. But I hate to keep this option sitting there locking capital for a month, with basically zero information getting revealed until then. How do @mods feel about it?
@deagol I think it depends what you mean by technically patched. The code has been changed and it is demonstrated to be working since your league score went down. So that part is fixed. I would have resolved Yes.
@Eliza yeah, I'm not 100% sure how it all works to open and close seasons. This is what @ian said about the fix:
I just pushed a fix to the backend and scheduler.
So I'm guessing the backend fix took care of the current season's fake profits (thus allowing me to resolve the other option "Fake league profits reversed"), and the scheduler will do the same thing for next and all future seasons (fixing it permanently which is what I meant for this option).
If the scheduler uses the exact same code that was already used as a one-time patch on the backend, then I guess it's already tested and confirmed working as you said. My only doubt is, not knowing the precise details, I can't be sure if it's exactly the same code resource, or if it's a copy-paste of it on a different resource file and then edited somewhat, like, most likely it requires passing a variable or parameter for the real-time date-timestamp when it runs, which might have been hard-coded as a constant when it was run against the backend, or any number of other architectural details I'm not aware of.
In short, I know it worked as intended for this current season, but it seems the scheduler is a different thing which hasn't been tested in real time, and there may be a small chance (or zero chance) it glitches when it runs at the random time on Nov 1. That's why I made two options, one for reversing this instance, and another for the permanent "technical patch" which would run on its own at the start of every month. Does all that make sense?
In any case, that concern is likely an overabundance of caution on my part. Even if the scheduler glitches in Nov it'll definitely get re-patched right away, essentially making the exploit "impossible to reproduce" as long as someone's there to patch it now that they know how. So I would agree it can resolve YES.
NO holders ( @wolf and @Chumchulum ) any objections?
@deagol The precise details are available for you to view, the only change in the scheduler is to fetch both the start and end dates, not just the end dates (as you guessed):
https://github.com/manifoldmarkets/manifold/commit/6d797ff62d4373ff5b65f2661d5e434e377f14dc#diff-67827e30bdc3b0115d4e0676c74af523197cb5729cb222c2dec763a7741fae86
@Bayesian all the profit stuff looks only at "bets", not "fills". The "bet" of the limit order only has the original time on it. If that bet was before the period in question it would be filtered out.
@Quroe The fix is changing the start time of the league to the same time the previous one ended. There is no longer an "overlap period".
Someone could STILL try to do this same thing but they will have to leave their orders open indefinitely until the new league, etc. etc......and of course an adversary could come along and claim those orders at any point. It's risky!
I guess you guys all love drama and contesting stuff. These were all quite objective, straightforward questions and now everyone even mods and admins are lawyering, unresolving (looks bad on me), N/A'ing (which all hate), trampling all over my well defined market and common sense resolution. So, I won't touch this at least for a while, feel free to resolve as you all wish.
@deagol If you wanted to profit maliciously, you would have hidden it through mana laundering. You decided to publish your fake profits, offer to undo them with the limit order, and ask for a bounty to reward you (much less than you'd profit if you never announced this). Calling it malicious would set a bad precedent.
(much less than you'd profit if you never announced this)
Abusing this loophole does not generate any actual profit, FWIW. It is strictly a manipulation of league standings (among countless others that are trivial to come up with, and the only defense against them is that they are against the rules, and most people follow the rules, & the occasional few who don't are generally punished).
@Ziddletwix Is that what made it "fake" as opposed to real profit? I think I understand now
@deagol Ah, adding the bounty as a tradable option probably influenced the decision to give it to you.
@ian But factually it already did happen, unless the mods are demanding it back from him. This is may be a misresolution and I ask for payment.
IIUC (if the UI is right), @Chumchulum had 1M of loss on this option, so I think paying them out would actually be fining them 1 mana?
@ian Thank you so much. The UI is not right. I cashed out M50 from my trades before the market N/Aed. I invested it elsewhere. I then made unprofitable trades that brought my total to gain back down to 1, after you already N/Aed it.
@ian I was afraid using the post-N/A profit (which would be 1) as the amount to reimburse me for an option which wrongly N/Aed would not address the issue. Thank you again for your attention.
@Chumchulum I think maybe m10k is too large considering that Daniel exploited the bug in prod... I'm not yet of a mind to take it (or some of it) back tho. I found his explanation helpful and the high-effort market a token of good faith, that's mainly what I was thinking when I gave out the bounty. Also it was pretty easy to undo his fake profits.
@ian I initially acquiesced to your decision to N/A this option given your authority here, but I'm sorry to say I must agree with @Chumchulum that it's a misresolution. The fact is you did send me the bounty, and if you later change your mind about it that's fine but it doesn't change the fact that it happened. The market asks if it'll happen by Nov 1, and it did. If it were "what will be the state of truth on Nov 1 about a bounty" then I'd have to accept the unresolve and leave it open until then, but in no situation implies cancelling it.
The reason you claim for N/A is your own bias. But I don't see how that justifies you N/A'ing my market. If anything, you thought you had inside info and bet on it (which is allowed and even encouraged here). In no way does your betting here influenced my YES resolution, I only resolved on the facts which happened and can't be made to not have happened even if the bounty gets retracted in the future.
For these reasons, I request that you (or @mods) re-resolve YES. An unresolve and N/A, as it stands now, looks pretty bad on me and my reputation. Users' trust in my reliability for resolving markets accurately would take a hit if I don't fight for what I think is the right resolution. The only bias that influenced your decision was on your side, not mine, but I'd be the one taking the reputational hit if I don't at least try to stand my ground. If you disagree, please follow your own process for disputed resolutions, which is to call for a vote from a panel of three unbiased mods that are not invested in the question. Thanks for your consideration.
Yeah this seems like an abuse of power. If the mods are going to N/A other people's answers for no reason other than to benefit themselves in totally separate contexts, I don't see why anyone would trust Manifold. If you didn't want to risk accusations of bias... don't bet? Forcibly taking over someone's market to help you escape the consequences of your own bad decisions is nuts.
@deagol I also agree that it should not be N/A, given the thing in question did happen. Not quite clear that I should unilaterally overrule @ian in this case but I am pretty confident the site guidelines should give you full control over the resolution of that option.
The guidelines and additional instruction "we" have been given from @SirSalty do give moderators quite a lot of discretion and generally we can push the boundaries a little bit if we think the situation calls for it. I will try to ping @EvanDaniel as a disinterested mod and maybe if Evan also agrees with me, he would re-resolve that option to Yes. (And if Manifold still doesn't like it, we would deal with the fallout instead...)
(My reading of the situation is the admins might not want to deal with the aftermath of the next person who takes a pointed action to prove a point, and also be expected to pay mana for it...but this time it did result in a payout!)
@Eliza I'll have to read through the whole thing while more awake and paying attention. Right now my take is that Ian probably shouldn't have acted unilaterally and should have trusted the mod team to do something reasonable if he asked for help.
@EvanDaniel basically what happened is... you know how I told you that these questions couldn't be manipulated because only Manifold had control over the events in question? well, i was right... but so wrong at the same time. 😅
thanks for helping out, as well as @Eliza. if this does resolve YES, i hope @ian sends his gains from this resolution (your losses) back to you. in fact, if that happens, then i pledge to donate the entirety of my 10k bounty into a "bug hunting" bounty market, or into whatever else you guys may need the mana for. how's that for a win-win-win?
@deagol Sounds good to me. I'll re-resolve yes. You can just send the mana back to the manifold account, which is the source of the bug hunting bounties. If you make a bounty you will probably get lots of comments but it will be hard to know which bugs deserve bounties vs not
@ian should @Ziddletwix get a refund too? idk if the interface is correct, shows they spent M200 on NO