About Gnosis (GNO)

The Gnosis prediction market platform is a blockchain-based approach to trading the outcomes of events in an open market.

The GnosisDAO, which administers two native assets, GNO being the primary one, is pursuing a full-on build out of an entire decentralized infrastructure,  compatible with the Ethereum ecosystem, and capable of facilitating new mechanisms for creating/trading digital predictive assets, Gnosis said.

"Gnosis builds new market mechanisms for open finance with product lines to create, trade, and hold crypto assets," Messari explained.

Ethereum-based GNO is used to generate OWL tokens via staking. GNO can be locked for up to a year, earning OWL tokens as rewards. OWL tokens are used as a means of paying fees within the prediction markets, whether building them or participating in them.

Gnosis operates a prediction market platform where users create tokens tied to predictions/outcomes as well as a decentralized exchange (DEX) where the tokens can be bought/sold. Gnosis Safe is a crypto wallet and browser connecting with ETH.

Three layers of architecture (core, service, applications) bond the platforms together.

"Prediction market tooling allows anyone to utilize customized forecasting applications," Messari said.

Who created GNO?

 Martin Köppelmann and Stefan George are Gnosis' cofounders. They built it, at first, as part of ConsenSys, the Ethereum venture production studio.

George is said to have previously launched Fairlay - Bitcoin Prediction Market and Exchange , a Bitcoin prediction market.

When was GNO created and how much was it worth?

Gnosis was founded in 2015. Two years later, in April 2017, it was spun out after an initial coin offering (ICO) for GNO, the native asset that powers the platform.

The sale of a small amount (4.2% of total supply) lasted only 15 minutes and raised $12.5 million. By the summer of 2017, GNO was changing hands for more than $300.

How is the price of GNO determined?

The total supply of GNO is fixed at 10 million tokens. After the ICO, the bulk of the tokens remained in the hands of project founders. Sell pressure could be an issue as vesting schedules come to fruition. But because the supply is capped, GNO tokens are seen as having value in the context of Gnosis' prediction markets and GNO's role powering it. Users stake GNO to generate OWL tokens. OWL is used to pay fees.

Why does GNO have value?

Gnosis created the OWL tokens to make decentralized prediction markets run. Staking GNO created OWL tokens; if blockchain-based, OWL-abetted predictive assets take off, GNO is expected to rise in value.

Holding GNO is key to the GnosisDAO governance process, shaping the future of the platform, according to Messari.

What are the main benefits of GNO?

• As Messari explained, it's not just the excitement of winning a wager that is at play here with the melding DeFi and prediction markets. "These applications produce an entirely new asset class: conditional tokens, which make arbitrary event outcomes tradeable and are also a powerful tool for information discovery, predicting the probability of certain events occurring.”
• By aggregating public opinion in an uncensored source, Gnosis has said it believes it can build a reliable forecasting tool.  And that could have applications for decision-makers in finance, government and insurance, among other sectors, one exchange said of Gnosis.
• GnosisDAO will allow Gnosis users to vote on platform governance and development. Gnosis CEO Martin Köppelmann told CoinDesk the DAO’s voting proposals "can be really wide-reaching” and include everything from product roadmap decisions, treasury management to funding public goods. DAOs open up a large space for collaboration and experimentation, he said.