The reference price feed is the external price source a market resolves against. For Polymarket crypto Up/Down cycles it is the feed underlying the settlement calculation — which matters because a bot trading off a different exchange's ticker is trading a correlated but non-identical number.
Two feeds that agree to within a few basis points most of the time can still disagree at exactly the moment a short-cycle market closes, and that is the only moment that determines payout.
PR&R publishes reconstructed feed series, including the 60-second TWAP used at settlement, so a backtest can resolve cycles the same way the exchange does rather than approximating with spot data.
Backtesting against whichever exchange's tape was easiest to obtain. Two feeds that agree almost always can still disagree at the moment a short-cycle market settles, and that is the only moment that pays.
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