Gnosis is a decentralized platform constructed on Ethereum, primarily targeted on prediction markets, decentralized finance, and safe digital asset administration by way of its multi-signature pockets, Gnosis Secure.
Launched by Martin Köppelmann, Friederike Ernst, and Stefan George in 2015 as a prediction market platform on the Ethereum blockchain, Gnosis has since expanded right into a broader blockchain infrastructure ecosystem.
Gnosis has grow to be a significant participant within the blockchain business, with 300,000+ validators, it is without doubt one of the largest initiatives to return out of the Ethereum community. The native token of the ecosystem, Gnosis GNO, peaked at $644 in November 2021. By April 2024, Gnosis surpassed 200 million transactions.
“Surpassing 200 million transactions underscores the rising adoption and sensible software of Gnosis Chain, affirming our path in direction of realizing Gnosis 3.0 which goals to bridge the hole between blockchain expertise and sensible, on a regular basis purposes for the lots,” Gnosis co-founder Martin Koppelman stated in a press release on the time.
The Gnosis ecosystem contains:
⛓️ Gnosis Chain – a sidechain used for verification.
🐄 Cow Swap – a decentralized trade.
🤝 The Coincidence of Desires (CoWs) Protocol – which matches customers whose trades on Cow Swap complement one another.
💳 Gnosis Pay – a crypto bank card.
🔐 Secure – a crypto pockets.
Gnosis was additionally among the many first initiatives supported by the Ethereum-focused incubator ConsenSys (which incubated Decrypt previous to its spin off in 2022). This text examines Gnosis’s improvement, core applied sciences, and function within the Ethereum ecosystem.
What’s Gnosis?
Gnosis is a layer-2 answer for the Ethereum blockchain designed to handle scalability challenges inside the Ethereum ecosystem.
As an Ethereum sidechain, Gnosis was designed to supply sooner and extra inexpensive transactions. Moreover, Gnosis advanced to include varied options, together with a prediction market and multi-signature wallets that require a number of personal keys to authorize a transaction.
Prediction markets let customers commerce shares based mostly on the end result of future occasions, equivalent to elections, sports activities outcomes, or market tendencies. In blockchain variations of prediction markets, oracles assist by pulling real-world information onto the blockchain, making certain correct outcomes and resolving disputes.
Prediction markets are thought of a significant use case for blockchain, and as a pioneer, Gnosis confronted stiff competitors within the early days.
“On the time, prediction markets had been a significant matter in blockchain. Our principal competitor, Augur, held the primary ICO, elevating about 5% of the Ether provide and turning into a key Ethereum software,” Gnosis co-founder Stefan George instructed Decrypt. “We noticed a chance to compete and construct one thing higher.”
Gnosis’ flagship dapp, Gnosis Olympia, launched in December 2017 as a take a look at model of Gnosis’s prediction market. It allowed customers to discover decentralized betting with out monetary danger. Individuals obtained free Olympia (OLY) tokens to put bets, and profitable predictions earned Gnosis (GNO) tokens. Whereas Olympia supplied a enjoyable method to expertise prediction markets, Gnosis has since taken it offline.
Do you know?
Gnosis is Greek for “data,” or religious perception gained by way of direct mystical expertise.
Trying again, one of many largest challenges Gnosis confronted, George stated, was timing.
“It was too early and prediction markets struggled with adoption, not only for Gnosis but additionally for Augur and others who tried them again within the day,” he stated. “In the meantime, the infrastructure we constructed to help prediction markets, like exchanges and wallets, took off and have become the principle focus.”
Over time, Gnosis advanced past prediction markets right into a complete decentralized ecosystem designed to facilitate safe, clear, and environment friendly decentralized purposes and important monetary infrastructure on Ethereum.
Historical past of Gnosis
💻 January 2015: Gnosis is based as a decentralized prediction market on Ethereum.
💰 April 2017: Gnosis raises $12.5 million in a 10-minute ICO.
🏛️ December 2017: Gnosis launches Olympia, a take a look at model of its prediction market app.
🤖 April 2020: Gnosis Protocol launches, introducing a brand new decentralized trade mechanism.
⛓️ November 2021: Gnosis Chain launches following the xDai and GnosisDAO merger.
🤝 April 2021: Gnosis Protocol v2 launches, introducing CoWSwap.
🚨 December 2021: Gnosis Beacon Chain launches as an Ethereum Digital Machine protocol.
🏦 July 2022: Gnosis Secure rebrands to Secure following a group vote by the GnosisDAO.
🟡 September 2022: Secure (previously Gnosis Secure) launches SafeDAO and the Secure Token.
💳 July 2023: Gnosis launches Gnosis Card, a self-custodial Visa Debit card.
💰 Might 2024: Gnosis launches Metri, an on-chain self-custodial pockets.
😡 February 2025: A laptop computer belonging to a Secure developer is compromised, resulting in the $1.4 billion hack of Dubai-based trade Bybit.
The Gnosis ecosystem
Gnosis Chain
Gnosis Chain launched in 2021 as an Ethereum sidechain designed for decentralization, effectivity, and low-cost transactions. It operates as an Ethereum Digital Machine execution-layer chain, secured by the Gnosis Beacon Chain consensus layer.
The Gnosis Beacon Chain makes use of a Proof-of-Stake mechanism, the place validators stake GNO tokens to safe the community and earn rewards. Ruled by GnosisDAO, a decentralized autonomous group, it prioritizes community-driven decision-making. The Gnosis Chain ecosystem contains initiatives like POAP, and Giveth.
“Gnosis Chain serves as a sort of substrate—a sister chain to Ethereum,” George defined. “It runs the identical expertise, consensus, and execution purchasers, and like Ethereum, it is rather decentralized, with a whole bunch of hundreds of validators.”
Coincidence of Desires Protocol
Launched by Gnosis in April 2021, the Coincidence of Desires (CoWs) protocol improved crypto buying and selling by immediately matching customers, lowering prices, and stopping slippage and front-running. It used batch auctions and solvers to optimize execution and powered the CoW Swap DEX.
CoW Swap
CoW Swap is a decentralized trade aggregator that finds the perfect buying and selling costs by matching customers immediately by way of its Coincidences of Desires mechanism. This peer-to-peer matching reduces reliance on exterior liquidity, enhances value effectivity, and protects towards Maximal Extractable Worth (MEV) exploitation that seeks to revenue from blockchain transaction manipulation.
The Gnosis Pay Card
The Gnosis Pay Card is a Visa-enabled debit card that connects on to a self-custodial crypto pockets. The Gnosis Card permits customers to spend their cryptocurrency property at any service provider that accepts Visa funds. Not like conventional crypto playing cards that require preloading funds onto the cardboard, the Gnosis Card permits funds to be made immediately from the person’s pockets on the time of the transaction.
GnosisDAO
GnosisDAO is a decentralized autonomous group (DAO) that governs the Gnosis ecosystem. Launched in November 2020, it transitioned Gnosis from a standard firm to a community-driven governance mannequin.
GnosisDAO operates below a futarchy governance system, the place choices are guided by prediction markets slightly than direct voting. On this mannequin, members wager on the outcomes of various proposals, and essentially the most promising ones—based mostly on market consensus—are carried out.
George acknowledged the challenges of futarchy adoption, highlighting the complexities of utilizing prediction markets for voting and efforts to make participation extra accessible.
“The truth is that it has been troublesome for folks to make these bets—they don’t essentially really feel comfy making predictions as a result of it’s too complicated,” he stated. “Moreover, we haven’t had a fantastic person expertise for participation.”
Regardless of these challenges, George stated Gnosis is working to resolve the problems with futarchy-based voting, and is supporting a brand new startup, futarchy.fi, which is “creating interfaces that ought to lastly make it simpler for folks to take part.”
Secure
Secure, previously Gnosis Secure, is an open-source, non-custodial sensible contract pockets for managing digital property on Ethereum and different EVM-compatible blockchains. It affords multi-signature safety and sensible accounts and helps Ethereum, Arbitrum, Polygon, and Avalanche.
The Bybit hack
In February 2025, Dubai-based trade Bybit suffered a major safety breach, ensuing within the theft of roughly $1.4 billion in Ethereum and associated property. The assault was attributed to North Korea’s Lazarus Group, which compromised the laptop computer of a Secure developer, enabling hackers to entry Bybit’s Ethereum chilly pockets.
Whereas George emphasised that Secure is “utterly separate from Gnosis,” he defined that “due to current occasions, we determined to be nearer to get by way of the disaster.”
Following the assault, George stated Gnosis assumed the worst-case situation and instantly took motion to safe their techniques and shield person information.
“With out understanding if the infrastructure was compromised, we took all the pieces down, recognized and remoted the problem, eliminated it, and improved monitoring,” he stated. “We reset the infrastructure, strengthened inner and exterior menace monitoring, and restored networks so everybody may entry their safes.”
To mitigate the probabilities of a repeat hack, George stated future software program designs will enable customers to work together with their Secure wallets with out counting on a service supplier.
Gnosis 3.0 and past
As of 2025, Gnosis’ infrastructure powers over 200 initiatives, making it a key participant within the blockchain business—and one that’s persevering with to construct instruments to help the fast-changing blockchain area, George instructed Decrypt.
Gnosis Chain’s blockchain infrastructure is “extremely decentralized, developer-friendly, and cheaper to make use of than Ethereum,” he stated, calling it a “nice dwelling” on which to construct purposes.
Future plans embody Gnosis 3.0, a “pivotal shift from infrastructure to software,” that may see Gnosis deal with consolidating a “collective of aligned initiatives” linked by its GNO token, emphasizing consumer-facing purposes that deal with real-world use instances.
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