Gnosis is a decentralized prediction market built on the Ethereum protocol. The Gnosis ecosystem consists of two tokens: GNO and OWL. GNO is a native token in the Gnosis system, and its main purpose is to generate OWL - users can obtain OWL by locking GNO in a smart contract.

Gnosis is a key project incubated by the Ethereum team. Both its development and ICO have received strong support from Ethereum-related personnel at home and abroad. By providing people with an open information prediction platform, it simplifies the threshold for building a prediction market, and at the same time, it is highly secure and transparent.

At the time of writing this article, GnosisGNO is priced at $188.40 and has a total market cap of $485,996,425.

How Gnosis GNO works

Gnosis cryptocurrency uses three separate platforms to achieve its vision.

Apollo – a market prediction platform where users can create their own tokens (tokens representing information, incentives and ideas);
Netherlands X – a decentralized exchange where users can trade and auction their tokens;
Safe Dungeon - a cryptocurrency wallet and browser that interacts with Ethereum applications;

Additionally, there are three layers in the Gnosis architecture that unite these platforms.

Central layer – the foundation of the platform, which contains smart contracts that provide events, outcome tokens, protocols and market mechanisms;
Service Layer – Provides additional services such as chatbots, payment processor integrations, and stablecoins. The latter also controls your transaction fee model. Gnosis predicts that most consumer applications will interact with resources in this layer;
Application Layer - Contains the prediction market dapp that is built in Gnosis. While Gnosis builds some applications for prediction markets, most of the applications accessible in this tier are built by third parties who can charge users for their services;

Holders of GNO tokens agree to "lock" their tokens in a smart contract (30-365 days). Longer lock-up periods can be achieved by adding a multiplier factor. The smart contract that determines the length of the user's lock-up period will then record the corresponding lock-up period into a formula used to regulate the supply of OWL tokens. Before locking GNO, users will be able to see exactly what OWL tokens they will get for executing this smart contract. Once users execute this contract, 30% of their OWL will be distributed immediately, while the remaining 70% will be gradually distributed proportionally during the lock-up period. Once the lock-up period expires, the locked GNO will stop producing OWL, and the holder of the GNO will be able to freely execute the transfer behaviour. GNO tokens can be used to create OWL an unlimited number of times (except for during the lock-up period).

What is Gnosis GNO?

GNO is an Ethereum-based token sold during the Gnosis ICO. The total supply is fixed at 100,000 tokens. Instead of directly trading cryptocurrencies, GnosisGNO enables users to trade based on resulting events. This approach is ideal for large institutional investors who require an approved legislative framework to directly participate in the cryptocurrency market.

The main use case for GNO is to generate OWL tokens through staking. Users can block GNO for a certain period of time (up to one year) to receive rewards. The amount of OWL received is calculated based on the length of the staking period.

The Gnosis cryptocurrency solves many of the problems related to low market liquidity. For example, in the stablecoin market, dollars are exchanged for tokens countless times. As such, liquidity is shared by many USD-pegged currencies, making it difficult to exchange one token for another. However, Gnosis combines separate token order books to create global liquidity, facilitating transactions between illiquid stablecoins. Additionally, its open-source nature and externally audited smart contracts make it secure and available to all users.

Gnosis GNO Crypto Wallet

In addition to placing GNO in the Gate.io exchange to facilitate trading, GNO can also be placed in the crypto wallet.