on Aug 20, 2025
by Gnosis
in Native
What if a simple concept of coordinating information, belief, and value without intermediaries could transform the entire financial landscape?
Ten years ago, in the wake of Ethereum's groundbreaking launch on July 30, 2015, Gnosis emerged with exactly that vision. As Ethereum celebrates its own 10-year milestone this month, it's a fitting moment to reflect on our parallel journey. Founded amid the excitement of Ethereum's early days, Gnosis started as a bold experiment in decentralized prediction markets, challenging the status quo of centralized information silos. But over the decade, we've evolved into something far greater: a full-stack, user-owned platform for open finance, governed by its community and dedicated to building infrastructure that empowers everyone, not just the gatekeepers.
This anniversary is about honoring the challenges, innovations, and community that got us here. From our roots in Consensys to becoming an independent force in Berlin, Gnosis has weathered market cycles, technical hurdles, and ecosystem shifts. We've seen the blockchain space mature from niche experiments to global adoption, and we've played a key role in that transformation. As co-founder Friederike Ernst reflects, "Ten years in, we're not just building tools; we're fostering a movement where users truly own their future, drawing from those early Berlin Ethereum meetups that sparked it all." In one such reflection, Ernst emphasized the broader mission: 'The internet was never meant to be owned by 5 companies. Web3 is how we take it back', a sentiment that has guided Gnosis through pivots and triumphs.
Backed by GnosisDAO, built by Gnosis Ltd, and powered by the GNO token, we're unifying our efforts under one brand: Gnosis. Join us as we revisit our path and chart the next decade.
Gnosis 1.0: The Spark of Decentralized Prediction (2015–2017)
Gnosis initially launched within the Consensys ecosystem, driven by a singular, radical mission: to build trustless, decentralized prediction markets. The core idea was to create an open platform where users could collectively forecast outcomes; anything from political elections and sporting events to scientific discoveries and market trends. The vision was about harnessing collective intelligence to generate accurate, tamper-proof information in a world rife with misinformation.
In those early days, our team experimented relentlessly. We developed the Conditional Tokens Framework, a groundbreaking standard that allowed for complex, conditional outcomes in prediction markets. This innovation powered our own platform, Omen, and it laid the foundation for successors like Polymarket, which by 2025 has facilitated over $2 billion in election-related volumes alone, demonstrating the real-world impact of our early work. But behind the scenes, it wasn't all smooth sailing. Ethereum was in its infancy; scalability issues, high gas fees, and a lack of user-friendly tools made building viable applications a constant battle. Remember the 2016 DAO hack that shook the ecosystem? It underscored the urgent need for better security and governance, lessons that directly influenced our pivot.
As development progressed, we uncovered a deeper truth: truly scalable decentralized apps required robust underlying infrastructure. There were no reliable custody solutions for assets, no effective frameworks for DAO coordination, and blockchain UX was far from intuitive. To address these gaps, we expanded our purview beyond prediction markets and focused on the foundational layers. This shift marked the end of Gnosis 1.0 and set the stage for our broader contributions to Ethereum's ecosystem.
Gnosis 2.0: Architecting Ethereum’s Missing Pieces (2017–Present)
By 2017, Gnosis had gained independence from Consensys and established Full Node in Berlin, a hub that became our technical powerhouse. From there, we shifted gears to tackle the core challenges of Web3: custody, coordination, and computation. This era was about methodical building, creating modular tools that have become indispensable to the blockchain world.
Co-founder Martin Köppelmann recalled the scale in 2018: 'Over 50 people are working towards the mission now... For the next 5-7 years we do not have to touch our ~200k ETH reserve.' This financial stability fueled innovations amid market volatility. Our flagship innovations form the backbone of this phase:
🛡 Safe — Originally Gnosis Safe, this smart contract wallet has revolutionized asset security. Today, it secures over $100 billion in assets across the Ethereum ecosystem. By 2025, Safe has evolved into its own thriving DAO and ecosystem, with adoption soaring among enterprises entering Web3, proving that secure, self-custodial wallets are key to mainstream onboarding. In October 2021, we celebrated a milestone when Gnosis co-founder, Stefan George shared the announcement that, “$100B worth of ETH and ERC20 stored [are] in Gnosis Safe contracts!', a testament to its rapid growth.
🐮 CoW Protocol —Originally launched as the Gnosis Protocol in April 2020 after years of development, it enabled permissionless token trading. It was rebranded to CoW Protocol (Coincidence of Wants Protocol) in early 2022 as part of a spin-out to its own DAO, driven by the rising popularity of CowSwap, the first interface built on it, and the need to establish a dedicated governance token, COW. This decentralized exchange protocol uses batch auctions and MEV protection to ensure fair trades. Through CoW Swap, users avoid predatory bots, saving an estimated $500 million+ in MEV-related losses since inception.
🧩 Zodiac — Developed by the Gnosis Guild, which was initially incubated by Gnosis as a DAO tooling project and has since spun out as an independent entity, Zodiac is a modular governance framework that turns Safe into a programmable OS for DAOs. It enables composable tooling for voting, treasury management, and more, fostering human-scale coordination. Zodiac has been adopted by dozens of DAOs, streamlining operations and reducing governance overhead. In early 2023, GnosisDAO highlighted the launch of Zodiac's Roles Mod and Pilot extension, powerful tools for customizing DAO governance.
🌐 Gnosis Chain — Born from the 2021 merger of xDai and Gnosis Beacon Chain, this credibly neutral Ethereum sidechain boasts one of the largest validator sets globally: over 300,000 validators ensuring zero downtime and low fees. It powers real-world use cases in DeFi, identity, payments, and beyond. The merge, proposed in November 2021 and accepted in December, transformed the consensus mechanism into proof-of-stake and Gnosis into the second-most validated chain after Ethereum. Köppelmann noted in 2022: 'The merge was almost as boring as Ethereum's— the best possible outcome!' By 2023, it hit a peak of >5M daily transactions.
🗳 GnosisDAO — Launched in 2020, this DAO governs strategic decisions and a multimillion-dollar treasury, with ownership transparently transferred to the community. Token holders vote on proposals, grants, and ecosystem funding with over 128 proposals processed to date, directing resources toward sustainable growth. Announced in November 2020, it empowered community governance from day one.Together, these components created Gnosis 2.0: a modular, interoperable system that, today, plays a fundamental role in powering the broader ecosystem. We've contributed to Ethereum's scalability, security, and usability, all while staying true to our ethos of user sovereignty.
Gnosis 3.0: Unified, Purpose-Driven, and Platform-Ready (Present–Future)
With our infrastructure proven and adoption accelerating, it’s time to bring the Gnosis ecosystem together under one unified brand. The successful passage of GIP-128 in July 2025 marked a pivotal shift in our strategy: we’re consolidating all key products, tools, and user experiences under the Gnosis name, fully aligning our mission and energy to double down on user empowerment while accelerating the adoption of Ethereum.
What does this new focus mean in practice?
Metri is our intuitive interface for everyday crypto, expanded to new markets and fully integrated with Circles.
Gnosis Pay delivers seamless real-world, self-custodial spending, offering crypto cards that rival traditional fintech, with full user control. Since its 2023 launch, it has processed €32M in EU transactions by 2025, fusing Web3 with daily finance.
Gnosis HQ anchors our developer and business ecosystem, supplying SDKs and core tools.
Circles continues under its own name, operating on Gnosis Chain as an incubator for identity and social finance innovation.
To ensure clarity and consistent user empowerment, there will be no more spinouts: every new launch stays within the Gnosis ecosystem. The GNO token remains at the center, powering staking, governance, user incentives, and ecosystem alignment. In 2024, we also launched GnosisVC, a $40M fund supporting projects that strengthen and extend the Gnosis ecosystem.
Looking Ahead: The Next Ten Years—A Unified Platform for Open Finance
Unifying under the Gnosis brand means delivering an integrated, seamless user experience that’s as intuitive as leading fintech apps but fully community-owned. It eliminates fragmentation in product, governance, and community rewards. Imagine a single place where you can save, spend, govern, and participate, where users are empowered, not exploited.
In the months ahead, look forward to:
Q3 2025: Launch of the new unified Gnosis brand.
Enhanced integrations with Gnosis Pay for everyday self-custodial payments.
Expansion of developer SDKs via Gnosis HQ.
Ongoing DAO innovation.
Strengthened collaborations with Safe, CoW Protocol, and other ecosystem partners.
We’re building an open financial system that prioritizes the public good: accountable, inclusive, and resilient. After a decade laying the groundwork, we invite the world to build the next ten years of open finance together.
Join Us In the Next Decade
What’s your Gnosis story? Share on X and tag us @gnosisdao. We’ll feature select stories in a follow-up!
Start here:
Download Metri.
Stake or become a validator on Gnosis Chain.
Propose or vote on GnosisDAO governance.
Integrate with Gnosis Pay or Gnosis HQ.
Explore Circles as money reimagined.
Dive into Gnosis AI, the Schelling point for open, intelligent Web3.
With Gnosis, open finance is live, global, and user-owned. Let’s keep building, together.
—The Gnosis Team
More articles
