Universal Market Access (UMA) is a decentralized protocol for creating Ethereum-based synthetic assets. It aims to achieve economic freedom by creating universal access to financial markets. UMA’s was formally announced in December 2018 on Medium by Hart Lambur and Allison Lu, who both previously worked in trading.
The UMA network is made up of two main parts: Priceless Contracts and Optimistic Oracle. Priceless Contracts are financial contract templates that are publicly available and can be used by developers to create different financial contracts including synthetic assets. Synthetic assets created with the help of priceless contracts can be labeled as completely collateralized without on-chain prices. UMA utilizes a Data Verification Mechanism (DVM) for its dispute resolution system which is a part of Optimistic Oracle that retrieves prices. DVM is only activated when the value of collateral backing a synthetic token is disputed. The assets’ prices used by DVM are reported by UMA holders who reference them off-chain.
In October 2021, UMA’s Optimistic Oracle was utilized by the Sherlock protocol, a risk management platform . The Sherlock protocol will activate the oracle if the initial decision claim is incorrect. UMA holders will review the claim and come up with a decision without bias.