Gnosis (GNO)

Summary

Introduction
The history of the Gnosis team
How does Gnosis work?
What are the key features of Gnosis Safe and GnosisDAO?
What are the main uses for Gnosis?

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Introduction

Gnosis is a project initially developed on the Ethereum blockchain. At present, Gnosis TVL is close to $260 million. L’objectif principal du projet est de permettre la creation of decentralized prediction markets. What does this mean? Using blockchain technology (in this case Ethereum), Gnosis uses smart contracts, so its operation is decentralized. A prediction market, on the other hand, can be defined as a platform that enables users to place bets. These bets are made in a variety of areas, from a sporting event to the outcome of an election.

In addition to this betting platform, Gnosis includes other products such as :

Gnosis Chainan independent layer 1 blockchain that (like Ethereum) enables the development of decentralized applications (dApps);
Gnosis Safeacrypto wallet for storing digital assets;
Gnosis DAO for protocol governance;
Gnosis ProtocolGnosis Protocol is a DEX for the decentralized exchange of tokens.Unlike many DEXs such as Uniswap, which are AMMs (Automatic Market Markers), Gnosis Protocol uses batch auction technology. This consists of grouping transactions into batches, enabling orders to be processed efficiently and guaranteeing fair prices.
CoW Protocola DEX similar to Gnosis Protocol, but which focuses on connecting traders directly via Coincidences of Wants ( CoW).
GnosisVCa platform that invests in early-stage Web3 projects that are poised to make significant contributions to Ethereum as well as projects closely related to the thriving Gnosis ecosystem;
Gnosis Studios incubates and develops applications for a decentralized future.
Gnosis Auction which brings new tokens to market through the creation of ICOs.

The Gnosis ecosystem involves the following 2 tokens:

xDAI, stablecoin based on the DAI. This is the token native to the Gnosis blockchain which is used to pay transaction fees and manage assets;
GNO, token ERC-20. C’est le Gnosis ecosystem governance token. Au moment de la rédaction de ce guide, la capitalisation du token GNO est de 385 millions d’euros ce qui place au 140ème rang mondial. Le cours du token est de 149 €, stable sur les 7 derniers jours (au 29 septembre 2024).

With a TVL of around $260 million, the Gnosis project ranks 28th among protocols hosting decentralized applications (dApps). In context, the TVL of Gnosis is close to that of Near Protocol (NEAR), Starknet (STRK) and Cardano (ADA).

The history of the Gnosis team

The Gnosis project was launched in 2015 a few days after the launch of Ethereum. Initially, Gnosis was developed by ConsenSys Inc.a firm specializing in Ethereum software.

In 2017, the project raised ETH 250,000 (equivalent to US$12.5 million at the time) in an ICO. During this ICO, 4% of GNO tokens were put on the market. Following this ICO, the project became independent and launched its native GNO token in April 2017. In 2021the ecosystem saw the arrival of its own blockchain, the Gnosis Chain

. Celle-ci résulte de la fusion (votée par la communauté) de xDAi et Gnosis DAO. Gnosis Chain est une sidechain of Ethereum and therefore uses the EVM, ETH’s virtual machine.

The Gnosis Chain’s native token is the xDAI. The blockchain counts over 200,000 validators in the world. Like Ethereum, the Gnosis Chain uses the Proof of Stake for its consensus. Between October 2023 and March 2024, the Gnosis blockchain saw a significant increase in its TVL, from $130 million to $300 million. At the time of writing, Gnosis’s TVL stands at $260 million.

The Gnosis project team consists mainly of :

Martin Köppelmann (CEO and co-founder). Il est titulaire d’un diplôme d’ingénieur en systèmes informatiques de l’Institut Hasso Plattner. Il a beaucoup travaillé sur l’utilisation de la blockchain en lien avec le concept de revenu de base universel. Avant de se lancer dans le projet Gnosis, il a créé le token ERC-20 Circles. Il a aussi fondé fairlay.com, un marché de prédiction centralisé de Bitcoin.
Stefan George (CTO and co-founder). Titulaire d’une licence en ingénierie des systèmes de l’Université de Potsdam et d’une maîtrise de l’Institut Hasso Plattner, il a commencé à s’intéresser aux cryptos en 2013. Il a également participé à la création de fairlay.com avec Martin Köppelmann et a lancé plusieurs startups à Berlin.
Prof. Dr. (COO). Physicienne de formation, elle a obtenu son doctorat à la Free University de Berlin, puis a mené des recherches à l’Université de Columbia et à Stanford pendant plusieurs années. En plus de ses activités au sein de Gnosis, elle est également secrétaire générale de l’Association allemande de la blockchain, le principal groupe de réflexion allemand sur la politique de la blockchain.

According to the project’s white paper published on December 22, 2017, the project also has many advisors including well-known crypto personalities such as:

Joseph Lubin (also a member of the Management Board), co-founder of Ethereum and ConsenSys Inc;
Jeremy Millar (also a member of the Management Board);
Jason Trostfounder of Smarkets ;

Vitalik Buterinco-founder of Ethereum.

How does Gnosis work?

Gnosis is a decentralized platform based on the Ethereum blockchain, designed for prediction markets and asset management tools. Its protocol enables users to create markets where they can speculate on the outcomes of future events, using prediction tokens. Gnosis uses a smart contract mechanism to guarantee the transparency and accuracy of transactions. The network also includes asset management tools such as Gnosis Safe, enabling secure, multi-signature control of funds held on Ethereum.

What are the key features of Gnosis Safe and GnosisDAO?

Gnosis Safe is the name of the secure wallet of the Gnosis ecosystem. It is designed for asset management on blockchain. Its main feature is that it is multisignature, i.e. it brings several signatures into play to carry out a transaction, making it more secure. What’s more, the multisignature aspect makes this wallet highly suitable for groups or companies planning to collectively manage crypto funds. Like most decentralized protocols, Gnosis has its own DAO called GnosisDAO

. Celle-ci permet aux utilisateurs de participer aux votes liés au fonctionnement de la plateforme et aussi de soumettre des propositions d’amélioration. Pour participer à la DAO, il suffit de posséder au minimum un token GNO et de suivre le processus suivant :

Proposal creation Proposals: community members can draft proposals for the allocation of funds, modification of the governance structure, or decision-making related to the organization’s operations.
Proposal specification Once the proposal has been published as a GIP (Gnosis Improvement Proposal), community members can discuss it and give their opinions. This discussion takes place directly on the forum and lasts 7 days. Même s’il existe certaines exceptions, en général, pour passer à l’étape suivante, la GIP doit récolter une majorité de votes positifs.
Vote Instant voting: for 7 days, users have the opportunity to vote « for », « against » or abstain from the proposed ILM. Instant voting is adopted if a majority vote YES and that the YES quorum is equivalent to 4% of the number of GNO tokens in circulation (currently 2,589,869) is reached.
Proposal execution If the proposal receives enough votes to be adopted, the attached DAO transactions can be triggered without authorization by anyone and will be executed.
Follow-up The teams behind the proposal are required to provide updates on the proposal’s progress and impact.

What are the main uses for Gnosis?

The main use case for Gnosis concerns its decentralized prediction markets. Comme expliqué ci-dessus, la plateforme permet aux utilisateurs de faire des paris sur des événements importants et ainsi de gagner de l’argent de la manière suivante :

Create a prediction market by defining a question and its various possibilities. For example, a prediction market could be « Who will win the presidential election?
Establishing bets through the purchase of tokens ;
Resolution and payment. Une fois l’événement passé, la plateforme Gnosis utilise des oracles to integrate the actual outcome and reward those who bet correctly. In our example above, users who bet on the right president will earn tokens. This payment is automatic, not dependent on a third party. It is entirely managed by oracles and smart contracts. This is why we speak of a decentralized prediction market.

A prediction market essentially contains information about the expected outcome of a future event.

Unlike a traditional financial market, prediction markets are questions about the future. Let’s take a simple example with an upcoming presidential election. The bet then concerns the candidate who will win the election. The options are: candidate A, candidate B or other. The shares associated with these three different options are predefined, but the total value of the shares is $1 (corresponding to 100% of the options).

The price for each option then evolves according to its probability of occurrence. If an individual believes he or she has superior information about the event in question, he or she is incentivized to buy shares that reflect his or her beliefs about the outcome, thus updating the information captured by the prediction market. When the market closes, the shares in the winning option become tradable for $1. On the other hand, the price of the other two (losing) options falls to $0. The people who bought the winning shares then receive a net capital gain, corresponding to the difference between one dollar and the price at which they bought their shares, multiplied by the number of shares held.

What are the latest innovations or major updates in the Gnosis ecosystem?

Gnosis is rather discreet and doesn’t often make the headlines in crypto news, unlike big projects like Ethereum or Bitcoin.

One of Gnosis’ most important innovations in 2024 is related to Ethereum. On March 13, 2024, the Ethereum hard fork called Cancun Deneb was launched. This hard fork was part of the « The Surge » phase of the Ethereum roadmap, and included EIP-4844, which enables so-called « blob » transactions.

It’s all about storing bigger data at lower cost. The Gnosis team took the lead and implemented this hard fork on their blockchain on March 11, 2024..

What are Gnosis tokens used for?

The GNO is the native token of the Gnosis platform. It is mainly used for :

Participate in governance GNO holders can vote on decisions concerning the evolution of the platform.
Staking Users can lock their GNOs to secure the network and be rewarded in return via proof-of-stake consensus.

Tokenomics

At the start of the project, it was planned that the number of GNO tokens would be capped at 10 million. In April 2022, a proposal (GIP-35) was put to the vote and accepted by nearly 86% of voters. This proposal aimed to reduce the maximum number of tokens from 10 million to 3 million. At the time of writing, there are 2,589,588 GNO tokens in circulationor 86% of the maximum offer.

What are Gnosis’s projects?

With a current TVL of $260 million, Gnosis has some 50 active projects. The most important in terms of TVL are :

RealT118 million ;
BalancerDEX, $81 million;
sDAIcollateral platform, $64 million;
AAVE V3lending platform, $49 million;
Sparka $37 million lending platform.

Another important project to know about on Gnosis is called Azuro. Ce protocole fonctionne avec la blockchain Gnosis mais également avec les réseaux Polygon, Arbitrum, Chiliz et Linea. Le projet s’inscrit parfaitement dans la ligne directrice de l’écosystème Gnosis.

A decentralized betting protocol designed to revolutionize the traditional betting industry by leveraging blockchain technology and smart contracts. With its decentralized governance model and its use of oracles for event outcomes, Azuro lays the foundations for a new generation of betting platforms where users are in control, rather than centralized bookmakers.

How to buy Gnosis?

Go to the Coinhouse home page and select the « Login » button.
Click on « Buy » (at the top of the home page) and type « GNO » in the « Receive » tab to receive Gnosis.
Define your payment method. You can pay by credit card or bank transfer if your bank account is located in Europe. Once selected, click on « Continue ».
Once you have purchased your GNO tokens, they will be transferred to the Coinhouse platform’s integrated wallet. At present, it is not possible to transfer them to an external wallet.

Another way to buy Gnosis tokens is to exchange them. To do this, you must first own USDT stablecoins(buy USDT easily) or USDC stablecoins(buy USDC).

On the platform’s home page, simply click on « Exchange », then choose USDT stablecoins in the « Sell » section and « GNO » in the « Receive » tab.

Coinhouse's opinion

Initially, Gnosis was a « simple » project belonging to the Ethereum environment. Over time, the project has diversified to finally take off. Gnosis now has its own blockchain and ecosystem.

With a TVL of $260 million, Gnosis is one of the world’s top 30 protocols, despite strong competition. The Gnosis ecosystem comprises two tokens

including the GNO, the governance token. The main feature of Gnosis is provide a decentralized infrastructure for creating bets on future events via prediction markets. More than just a betting platform or a polling institute, Gnosis sets itself apart by positioning itself in the inclusive search sector for reliable information. In addition to its prediction market, Gnosis also has a multi-signature portfolio (Gnosis Safe) that enables secure management of predictive assets, several innovative DEXs such as Gnosis Protocol and its batch auctions technology, and CoW Protocol, which is based on Coincidences of Wants (CoW). Gnosis is an ambitious project

which has the advantage of offering something different in a world of decentralized applications dominated by DeFi or asset exchange. Even though the project has become independent, Gnosis still benefits from close ties with the giant Ethereum, which can only encourage its growth. Its future development will essentially depend on the team’s ability to explain to the general public the advantages of a prediction market associated with blockchain technology.