Gnosis emerged in 2015 as a decentralized prediction market on the Ethereum blockchain, initially comparable to the betting platform Augur. Gnosis serves as an open framework, while prediction markets such as Azuro, Omen, and Reality Card operate on the Gnosis Chain. These platforms let users place bets on a variety of events, like sports outcomes, cryptocurrency prices, technology developments, and political results.
Over time, Gnosis evolved and began developing infrastructure tools to expand the Ethereum ecosystem’s utility. The project introduced products such as Safe, a decentralized custody protocol and asset management platform, and the CoW Protocol, a permissionless trading protocol. Like Uniswap and 1inch, the CoW Protocol finds the lowest trading prices across exchanges and aggregators.
Gnosis has also developed other products, including Conditional Tokens, a new asset class for highly liquid prediction markets, Gnosis Auction for determining fair token prices, and Zodiac, a set of tools for composable Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs). In November 2020, Gnosis announced the creation of GnosisDAO, a prediction market-driven collective focused on guiding the Gnosis ecosystem.
The Gnosis ecosystem is powered by its native GNO token, used for staking on the Gnosis Beacon Chain and as the governance token for GnosisDAO. The ecosystem relies on several components to enhance Ethereum’s utility:
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CoW Protocol: A permissionless decentralized exchange (DEX) that lets users exchange any ERC-20 token. The CoW Protocol matches buyers and sellers through multi-token batch auctions to execute trades at the best available price and protects traders from miner extractable value (MEV).
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Safe: A customizable multi-signature wallet infrastructure that functions as a smart contract wallet on the Ethereum network. It supports ETH, ERC-20, and ERC-721 (NFTs) tokens and enables interaction with various DeFi platforms. Safe is governed by SafeDAO, a decentralized collective of core contributors, backers, users, and ecosystem contributors, known as Safe Guardians.
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Gnosis Chain: An Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) execution-layer chain that employs the xDAI stablecoin for transactions and fees. The Gnosis Beacon Chain (GBC) consensus layer secures the network. The GBC uses a Proof-of-Stake (PoS) mechanism, where users lock up GNO tokens to participate in transaction validation and earn additional GNO tokens as rewards.
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GnosisDAO: Established in 2020, GnosisDAO is the collective steward of the Gnosis ecosystem. The GnosisDAO governance process takes place on the Gnosis Forum, with each successful proposal passing three phases before approval. The process is permissionless, and community members holding at least 1 GNO can participate in the GnosisDAO Snapshot poll.
Gnosis aims to offer an alternative financial system built on trust, transparency, and decentralization. As the world becomes increasingly connected and reliant on digital platforms, projects like Gnosis provide innovative solutions for financial transactions, asset management, and decentralized governance, making them accessible and appealing to users of all ages.
