GIP-128 Should GnosisDAO fund Gnosis Ltd with $30m/ year?

[ernst]

• In favor
• Against

GIP: 128
title: Should GnosisDAO  fund Gnosis Ltd with $30m/ year?
author: Friederike Ernst (@ernst)
status: Phase-2
type: Funding
created: 2025-07-12

Summary

This proposal requests a grant with an annual budget of $30 million in stablecoins, disbursed quarterly, to fund the operations of Gnosis Ltd — now formally a quasi-foundation — as the primary builder of Gnosis infrastructure and ecosystem products.

Gnosis Ltd played a foundational role in the Gnosis ecosystem: it conducted the original GNO token sale in 2017, and in 2021, divested 150k ETH, 8 million GNO, and several third-party token positions into the newly formed GnosisDAO. Since then, it has operated without requesting funding, relying on its retained assets.

As of early 2025, Gnosis Ltd has successfully completed its legal transformation into a quasi foundation (a Company Ltd by guarantee without share capital), eliminating the dual equity-token structure and converting the entity into a purely purpose driven organization, with the objective to further the Gnosis ecosystem and decentralised technologies more generally. With the transition complete and reserves running low, this proposal marks its first funding request to the DAO.

While many entities contribute, Gnosis Ltd is still the primary development and operations entity in the Gnosis ecosystem. It builds and maintains the core infrastructure that powers Gnosis Chain, and develops and supports major products, onboarding, BD, and governance tooling for the community.

This proposal ensures continuity and momentum for critical initiatives, while maintaining full alignment with the DAO’s long-term interests.

Motivation

We’re proposing an important change in how we position Gnosis. Going forward, Gnosis would become a core consumer-facing brand, rooted in integrity, trusted execution, and user agency. The story we want to tell is no longer just about open infrastructure, but about building fair, user-owned financial systems.

We believe we can gain stronger traction by fully committing to our most compelling narrative, rather than trying to be everything at once. We now have all the key components in place, and bringing them together under one cohesive brand will not only clarify our message but also strengthen the platforms that power it.

We propose renaming the Metri app to Gnosis. It would become the central retail interface to everything we build. All core offerings — Gnosis [i.e., the wallet], HQ, Gnosis Chain, and Gnosis Pay — would live under the Gnosis domain and share a unified brand identity. Only Circles retains its own branding and domain, while continuing to operate on Gnosis Chain as a core ecosystem project.

This structure is loosely reflected in the placeholder landing mockup we created to illustrate its potential appearance. In that concept:

Personal → Wallet (fka Metri)
Business → Gnosis HQ
Platform → A foldout menu linking to Gnosis Chain, Gnosis Pay, Circles
Collective → A foldout menu to Gnosis Labs, Gnosis VC, Treasury, Forum, Blog, Newsletter

Gnosis Chain remains the foundational platform: resilient, credibly neutral, and deeply integrated with local stablecoins and payment rails. Gnosis Pay enables on-chain assets in self-custody to be used in everyday payments. It operates B2B and powers apps like Gnosis, Zeal, and Picnic. GNO is the unifying asset across all these efforts — value creation accrues to GNO. There will be no further spinoffs.

Scope of Work & Budget Breakdown

The requested grant will cover Gnosis Ltd’s forecasted expenditure for a 12-month period, starting July 1, 2025. Disbursements will occur quarterly, with each installment totaling $7.5M in stablecoins. Funds will be sent to Gnosis Ltd’s Gnosis Safe.

Below is a high-level breakdown of Gnosis Ltd’s budget for the next 12 months. There are currently 127 team members and we’re expecting to onboard 25 more in the coming year.

Product Development	$15.5m
Gnosis Pay	$8.0m
Circles	$1.5m
Gnosis (fka metri)	$3.1m
Gnosis Business (fka HQ)	$2.9m

Gnosis Chain and Core Infrastructure	$3.6m
Personnel (chain, bridges, devops, audits, analytics)	$1.95m
Hosting and cloud providers	$0.65m
Security audits and bug bounties	$0.3m
Gnosisscan	$0.4m
Safe network support	$0.18m
tenderly network support	$0.1m
dune network support	$0.02m

BD and DevRel	$3.85m
Personnel	$0.85m
Integrations (CEX, stablecoins, onramps)	$2.5m
Event sponsorships	$0.4m
Open internet clubs	$0.1m

Marketing and design	$2.035m
Personnel	$1.05m
Marketing spent	$0.835m
PR agency	$0.15m

Gnosis Labs	$0.4m
Personnel	$0.4m

HR & ops	$0.45m
Personnel	$0.45m

Legal	$1.625m
Personnel	$1.025m
External advisory	$0.6m

Finance	$0.59m
Personnel	$0.41m
External advisory	$0.11m
Software	$0.07m

Personnel overhead	$1.5m
Travel, equipment, software, offices

Management	$0.45m
M/S/F	$0.15m each

Reporting and Accountability

• Gnosis Ltd will publish quarterly reports detailing spend and progress across all budget categories.

• No additional oversight structures are proposed; DAO token holders retain ultimate accountability through governance.

• Future funding will depend on DAO review of outcomes and updated proposals.

Closing Note

Gnosis Ltd seeded the DAO. This proposal ensures the DAO can continue to rely on it. Onwards and upwards!

[chandresh]

I’m very happy with this direction and the detailed GIP

[Sam_Trust]

This is an interesting proposal, and I find myself torn on it.

On one hand, the founders have delivered impressive, value-driven Web3 infrastructure over the years—often at the expense of their own profits. Additionally, the DAO now holds funds that originally belonged to Gnosis Ltd, though it’s unclear to me why these were transferred in the first place—perhaps for legal reasons.

On the other hand, the founders have historically had the freedom to allocate those funds, including for investments, without much oversight. Meanwhile, there are areas where Gnosis hasn’t particularly excelled in recent years such as go-to-market strategy, marketing, and building a sustainable, profitable business. From reading the proposal, it seems the founders would like to maintain the flexibility of the previous structure without increased DAO involvement in deciding what gets developed or the strategic direction of Gnosis Ltd.

Gnosis Ltd is no longer a startup, and I would assume its current structure includes inefficiencies or redundancies that could justify a ~20% cost reduction without major losses in effectiveness. This kind of cost optimization is fairly standard for companies that are 8 years old and have never undergone serious external oversight. It’s hard to judge whether the proposed budget is reasonable based on the limited information, but some trust is inherently part of the equation.

Additionally, it’s still unclear how the various projects feed future value back to GNO holders. It would be helpful if the founders could provide more detail here. For instance, is Gnosis Pay 100% owned by Gnosis Ltd? Has the DAO officially agreed to fund Gnosis Labs? (To my knowledge, no proposal has been made.)

Apologies for the brain dump. These are just some of the questions on my mind that make this proposal difficult to evaluate. Addressing them could go a long way toward enabling a more informed decision.

[staworth]

Our Vote

We will be voting in favour.

Realistically, we see no reasonable alternative: failing to fund and support Gnosis Ltd risks damaging Gnosis’ core and ongoing efforts. There are (and must be) significant asymmetry of information here… GNO holders can’t make informed decisions on budgeting without detailed information about Gnosis Ltd’s internal operations… but Gnosis Ltd can’t develop cutting-edge products if it’s forced into public disclosures about the bets it’s planning to justify its budget.

We could haggle and debate to achieve some other compromise, without really knowing if that’s likely to be better or worse for Gnosis overall. But really I don’t think we want the budget of Gnosis Ltd to be tightly controlled and altered by the DAO… the team has done great things without that level of oversight, and there is nothing to suggest that the DAO can add value here.

Ultimately, this comes down to trust… and we trust Gnosis Ltd.

Questions

However, we think this is the perfect opportunity to raise some foundational questions, to explore what this dynamic means for the DAO and GNO holders at time of this proposal.

We’d love to hear from @ernst and others in Ltd’s senior leadership team on a few questions set out below. We won’t be disappointed if any can’t or won’t be answered, but we see this as a great opportunity for information sharing and setting the tone for the DAO’s role and work moving forwards.

@ernst

value creation accrues to GNO

@Sam_Trust

Additionally, it’s still unclear how the various projects feed future value back to GNO holders

• As @Sam_Trust mentions above, we’d like to know how you see value creation accruing to GNO. Will profits from Gnosis Ltd’s activities flow back to the DAO? Or do the assets generated by Gnosis Ltd’s work belong to or remain held for the benefit of the DAO? Or maybe do you expect that Gnosis Ltd’s activities will lead to future inflows from third parties to the DAO (like how token distributions from spinoffs have previously grown the DAO’s treasury)?

@ernst

As of early 2025, Gnosis Ltd has successfully completed its legal transformation into a quasi foundation (a Company Ltd by guarantee without share capital)

• This fact has a few interesting connotations for the formal relationship between the DAO and Gnosis Ltd:

  • Typically, these companies have members but not shareholders. Is the DAO a member of Gnosis Ltd? And can it be disclosed who (if any) the other members of Gnosis Ltd are?

  • Do any of the company’s foundational documents (e.g. articles of association) enshrine a role for the DAO? For instance, the articles could require that any surplus assets upon the unwinding of Gnosis Ltd must be sent to the DAO.

  • Where neither of the above questions confirm any formal role for the DAO in Gnosis Ltd, is there anywhere else in the company’s formal arrangements where the DAO is given an explicit role? And if not, then who or what in a legal sense are the ultimate beneficiaries of the company activities?

  • Is it possible to publish or share a summary of the company’s foundational documents?

@ernst

• Gnosis Ltd will publish quarterly reports detailing spend and progress across all budget categories.

• Will the DAO be given any insights into Gnosis Ltd’s revenues, profitability or balance sheet?

  • On a first glance, readers might expect that the $30M of funding represents Ltd’s full annual spending. However, it’s possible that further spending (or saving/earnings retention) may be taking place beyond the DAO’s funding, driven by revenues or the existing assets of Ltd. We would love to see the proposed quarterly reports be as comprehensive on the financials of Ltd as you reasonably can be!

@ernst

• Future funding will depend on DAO review of outcomes and updated proposals.

• Do you have a view of what a “DAO review of outcomes” may look like at the end of this 12-month proposal?

  • In an ideal world, we’d like a review process to be defined at the offset, so that it flows through the funding period. The worst scenario for a review would be if the definition of a process is left to the end of the 12-month period (when more funding is then required in short order), and must then be dealt with hastily.

  • Personally, we’d love to see the DAO elect a small review committee directly after this proposal that would meet with Ltd throughout the year, give feedback on the quarterly reports and ultimately deliver their own annual review report assessing Ltd’s progress against the requested funding.

Thanks in advance for all responses

[ernst]

@Sam_Trust

Additionally, the DAO now holds funds that originally belonged to Gnosis Ltd, though it’s unclear to me why these were transferred in the first place—perhaps for legal reasons.

So, the Ltd belonged to the founders (Martin, Stefan, me, Consensys) and was a for-profit company when we conducted the token sale. Initially, this wasn’t a concern because the token sale was for $ 12.5m – but we kept most of it in ETH and benefited from the market, ultimately leaving us with a very significant treasury, not just 2-3 years of runway. It was clear to us that all value should accrue to the GNO token, not equity, but it was not clear whether we could turn the for-profit company into a foundation-like thing (from a legal point of view) and if so, when. Legally, by that time, we had built everything promised in the white paper and could have dissolved the company and distributed the holdings to the shareholders. So there was no necessity to divest to the DAO, but morally, it was the right thing to do.

That aside, we also welcomed having more direct input from GNO token holders. We worked on futarchy concepts for the DAO – as always, a bit ahead of time. Bringing that back is absolutely still in the cards. There are currently vanilla prediction markets about Gnosis on futarchy.fi, decision markets will come at some point, too. Futarchy.fi hasn’t launched officially yet, so it’s early days!

@Sam_Trust

Additionally, it’s still unclear how the various projects feed future value back to GNO holders. It would be helpful if the founders could provide more detail here. For instance, is Gnosis Pay 100% owned by Gnosis Ltd?

There are Gnosis Pay companies that belong to the founders, since interfacing with licensed businesses and applying for licenses requires a UBO list without ICO-era crypto companies. However, there are legal provisions in place that ensure that no value can be taken out of these companies by the shareholders, and profits accrue to the GNO token. So technically, the answer here is no, but factually, everything belongs to the DAO.

@Sam_Trust

Has the DAO officially agreed to fund Gnosis Labs? (To my knowledge, no proposal has been made.)

So far, the Gnosis Labs research has been funded by the Ltd, not requiring a DAO proposal. IMO funding Gnosis Labs makes sense for one, to grow the AI scene on Gnosis Chain, a very relevant proportion of payments on Gnosis Chain are actually agentic in nature (relevant dune dashboard). Other projects that the team is involved with is making documentation better/ more interactive, and prospectively helping with customer service automation technology, some sort of robo investment adviser etc.

@Sam_Trust

Gnosis Ltd is no longer a startup, and I would assume its current structure includes inefficiencies or redundancies that could justify a ~20% cost reduction without major losses in effectiveness. This kind of cost optimization is fairly standard for companies that are 8 years old and have never undergone serious external oversight. It’s hard to judge whether the proposed budget is reasonable based on the limited information, but some trust is inherently part of the equation.

This is a bit tough to respond to, because at a high level, your point is of course valid. I am sure there are some costs we could curb, and we actively go through all our expenditures regularly and re-evaluate them. I would argue that the budget is commensurate with the number of people and the scope of the project. Optimizing for the last $ here without impacting founder and team agency, is tricky. I would be happy to have select trusted people with experience in company operations review the budgets with us and share their insights and potential advice. But you’re right in that some level of trust in us is needed here.

[claberus]

Glad to see Gnosis streamlining its identity and staying committed to transparency and spending discipline.

@ernst

It was clear to us that all value should accrue to the GNO token, not equity, but it was not clear whether we could turn the for-profit company into a foundation-like thing (from a legal point of view) and if so, when

Gnosis has consistently demonstrated financial discipline and integrity. The team has avoided value extraction through private entities, unlike many others in the industry. Their long-term commitment and transparent approach set a strong example.

This is the right time to clearly reinforce that all Gnosis initiatives and investments are designed to accrue value to GNO and GnosisDAO. While these initiatives are still in a growth phase and may not deliver short-term profits, a communication strategy is needed. Each project should commit to channeling future profits back to the DAO treasury.

GNO holders are the only ones with control over the GnosisDAO treasury. They are the economic beneficiaries of the entire ecosystem. At the same time, the team remains cautious not to trigger security classifications that could impact centralized exchange listings. As regulatory clarity improves, it will be natural to transition toward a simpler, equity-like model.

This is a time for clarity, alignment, and long-term conviction.

[ernst]

Thank you for the trust you have in us! Let me try to address the questions one by one:

@staworth

As @Sam_Trust mentions above, we’d like to know how you see value creation accruing to GNO. Will profits from Gnosis Ltd’s activities flow back to the DAO? Or do the assets generated by Gnosis Ltd’s work belong to or remain held for the benefit of the DAO? Or maybe do you expect that Gnosis Ltd’s activities will lead to future inflows from third parties to the DAO (like how token distributions from spinoffs have previously grown the DAO’s treasury)?

Gnosis Ltd is the company that develops the dapps, but usually they are hosted/ operated by a different entity, depending on the nature of the service and regulatory setup. The metri interface, for instance, is hosted by Gnosis Ecosystem (Cayman) Ltd, Gnosis Pay is based out of the UK and Portugal, etc. How revenue is collected/ funneled into the DAO varies case by case. For instance, fees that metri collects in CRC are passed on to the DAO directly, whereas Gnosis Pay revenue is already part of the 8m budget. Projected revenues for Gnosis Pay are just above 1m, but costs are 9m. That being said, there are no shareholders, or if there are, they cannot extract value. The idea is that all profits are collected in the DAO.

I wouldn’t exclude the possibility that the Ltd undertakes other work (for instance, it has received a grant in the past from the EF for maintaining Open Ethereum, an Eth 1 client). Such revenue would not necessarily flow to the DAO directly, but since there are no shareholders,

@staworth

This fact has a few interesting connotations for the formal relationship between the DAO and Gnosis Ltd:

• Typically, these companies have members but not shareholders. Is the DAO a member of Gnosis Ltd? And can it be disclosed who (if any) the other members of Gnosis Ltd are?

The DAO is not incorporated and thus cannot be a member. DAO members are the previous directors. Let me check whether this is public info, I assume so. I will revert!

@staworth

• Do any of the company’s foundational documents (e.g. articles of association) enshrine a role for the DAO? For instance, the articles could require that any surplus assets upon the unwinding of Gnosis Ltd must be sent to the DAO.
• Where neither of the above questions confirm any formal role for the DAO in Gnosis Ltd, is there anywhere else in the company’s formal arrangements where the DAO is given an explicit role? And if not, then who or what in a legal sense are the ultimate beneficiaries of the company activities?
• Is it possible to publish or share a summary of the company’s foundational documents?

No, the only explicit purpose of Gnosis Ltd is to further the Gnosis ecosystem. This is somewhat broad, but also allows more room for flexibility should anything happen with the DAO for instance. Once again, it’s balancing navigability and trust. Ideally, there would be (and hopefully at some point will be!) several Gnosis Ltd size entities servicing the DAO under different leaderships for different undertakings.
Let me check whether the foundational docs are public. If so, happy to supply them!

@staworth

• Will the DAO be given any insights into Gnosis Ltd’s revenues, profitability or balance sheet?
  • On a first glance, readers might expect that the $30M of funding represents Ltd’s full annual spending. However, it’s possible that further spending (or saving/earnings retention) may be taking place beyond the DAO’s funding, driven by revenues or the existing assets of Ltd. We would love to see the proposed quarterly reports be as comprehensive on the financials of Ltd as you reasonably can be!

The Ltd transferred all transferrable assets to the DAO. There are some illiquid positions, but nothing very significant. The Ltd has no significant other sources of revenue at the moment. We will definitely be reasonably transparent!

@staworth

• Do you have a view of what a “DAO review of outcomes” may look like at the end of this 12-month proposal?
  • In an ideal world, we’d like a review process to be defined at the offset, so that it flows through the funding period. The worst scenario for a review would be if the definition of a process is left to the end of the 12-month period (when more funding is then required in short order), and must then be dealt with hastily.
  • Personally, we’d love to see the DAO elect a small review committee directly after this proposal that would meet with Ltd throughout the year, give feedback on the quarterly reports and ultimately deliver their own annual review report assessing Ltd’s progress against the requested funding.

We will give quarterly updates, and would also be happy to do update calls with significant GNO holders/ representatives!

[CryptosNF]

Support for GIP-128 and Questions about GNO Future

I fully support GIP-128, which allocates $30M annually in stablecoins to Gnosis Ltd to advance the Gnosis ecosystem. Since the 2017 GNO sale and the 2021 asset transfer to GnosisDAO, Gnosis Ltd has driven relentless innovation. This funding is vital to continue building cutting-edge products and infrastructure.

However, I have questions about GNO future. Projects like Safe and CoW Swap become independent, which is a strength, but GNO’s utility is limited to staking and governance. How can we enhance its value and role?

1. How can GNO directly benefit from the success of ecosystem projects?

2. Can we create new use cases or incentives to make GNO more attractive?

3. How can we position GNO as a central and dynamic asset?

Gnosis excels in innovation, but how can we translate this into value for GNO holders? I’d love to hear the community’s and Gnosis Ltd’s thoughts on this!

[Sam_Trust]

Thank you @ernst for sharing details. It provides valuable context.
A few follow up questions:

@ernst

There are Gnosis Pay companies that belong to the founders, since interfacing with licensed businesses and applying for licenses requires a UBO list without ICO-era crypto companies. However, there are legal provisions in place that ensure that no value can be taken out of these companies by the shareholders, and profits accrue to the GNO token. So technically, the answer here is no, but factually, everything belongs to the DAO.

1. I understand that the profits generated by the various projects/entities (Pay, Metri, GC, Circles) are meant to flow back to GNO holders. However, if I’m following correctly, it isn’t currently possible to distribute those profits directly. What mechanism would channel profits from each entity to GNO holders or at least to the Gnosis DAO? Would this be done through GNO buybacks, for example? Unfortunately, there is no smart contract in place to verify or enforce such a mechanism for the DAO.
2. How will these values be captured by kpk’s monthly reports? Are the treasuries primary on-chain?

@ernst

This is a bit tough to respond to, because at a high level, your point is of course valid. I am sure there are some costs we could curb, and we actively go through all our expenditures regularly and re-evaluate them. I would argue that the budget is commensurate with the number of people and the scope of the project. Optimizing for the last $ here without impacting founder and team agency, is tricky. I would be happy to have select trusted people with experience in company operations review the budgets with us and share their insights and potential advice. But you’re right in that some level of trust in us is needed here.

As mentioned above, whether the budget is reasonable or not is not possible to assess based on the information given and would require an in depth review imho. Do like the idea of a review committee tough.

Twenty percent comes to roughly $6M p.a. —certainly not a trivial sum—but I agree the founders have earned enough trust to front-load the funds and provide a more detailed review afterward. Over time, all else being equal, I would expect the finance request to go down though.

Moreover, the requested amount would consume nearly all of the Gnosis DAO’s available stablecoins (as of the June report). This may be a question for kpk: which assets do you plan to sell to finance this GIP: ETH, SAFE, or GNO?

[mrtdlgc]

Overall, as we do not have any other entity to come up for executing the Gnosis vision, this proposal is indeed supposed to pass for keeping the ship afloat.

However, I would like to take this as an opportunity to raise a few questions as well.

The amount requested for expenditures for the following year can only make sense if we have a clear picture on revenue as well. For instance, the highest amount of funding from this $30m ask will apparently go to Gnosis Pay, and Gnosis Pay is projected to have around $1m in revenue. Is there any projection/foresight on where the constituents of Gnosis LTD will turn into self-sustaining entities?
Or in case some of the constituents causing the leakage of value from the treasury with little to no hope of becoming profitable, would these initiatives be considered as leakage and cut down from the expenses? How can these decisions be made around each entity under the umbrella of Gnosis LTD? Or to what extent the voice of the DAO will be heard and implemented over what to invest in and what not?
I believe the core issue leading to the confusion of what Gnosis is and why Gnosis 3.0 has not been fully understood is this lack of governance/decision making power of GNO on the oversight of the execution of each pillar of this vision. Of course, with a big enough treasury Gnosis can keep experimenting and expanding with sufficient runway for a long time. However, over 8 years, Gnosis is not really a start-up anymore and should consider the balance between its expenditures and at least projected revenue if we are to talk about value accrual to the GNO token. It is no wonder the market is pricing the token’s market cap solely based on the existing treasury value of the DAO. To turn GNO into an investable asset, we need to create a clear picture on future revenue which might then incur GNO a speculative value on top of the treasury assets.
And to do that, some oversight and better accountability on top of the quarterly reports are vital. Some simple step would be to share the balance sheet, which is already a requirement in many jurisdictions for any company, with the DAO other than the kpk monthly reports. The other would be to enable the significant stakeholders to the DAO to have better/more transparent discussions over the decision making on the activities of the execution of plans.
Simply, accountability needs to be a two-way communication between the stakeholders of the DAO and Gnosis LTD.

[lefterisjp]

Thank you for this post @ernst.

The positive things here are:

• The unified brand identity
• Trying to change the narrative and showcase that it’s all about Gnosis and the GNO token.

The negatives:

• I still think Gnosis is trying to do way too many things. Retail payments, business payments accounts, UBI, retail wallet, AI agens and more. This shows a lack of focus, and when you are trying to do everything many times you end up doing nothing.
• The budget is quite heavy. $30m for a year and with plans to increase personnel by 20% it means we are going to expect an even heavier budget next year. Isn’t that too much? Other have mentioned, but shouldn’t you premptively think on how to reduce inefficiencies and have a tighter budget?
• The budget is not details enough in some categories. I would like to see more detailed breakdown, like how many FTEs are employed for each category, avg salaries, more detailed breakdown of expenses in each category etc.

Some first questions on the budget:

1. What is Open Internet Clubs?
2. Can you please do a breakdown of the $2.5m for integrations?
3. What is Legal /Personnel and why is it ~2.5x the normal personnerl?
4. What is Managenent M/SF? Is this the founder’s compensation and stands for Martin, Stefan and Friederike? Is that on top of the normal salaries the founders are getting on that upcoming year? I would assume the founders are very strongly exposed to GNO and as such the success of this plan alone would be an amazing financial reward.

[Louk]

Stake Capital supports this proposal. This budget seems aligned with the challenges ahead for Gnosis.

[ernst]

Thanks, CryotosNF!

@CryptosNF

However, I have questions about GNO future. Projects like Safe and CoW Swap become independent, which is a strength, but GNO’s utility is limited to staking and governance. How can we enhance its value and role?

1. How can GNO directly benefit from the success of ecosystem projects?
2. Can we create new use cases or incentives to make GNO more attractive?
3. How can we position GNO as a central and dynamic asset?

Gnosis excels in innovation, but how can we translate this into value for GNO holders? I’d love to hear the community’s and Gnosis Ltd’s thoughts on this!

The DAO can distribute profits that accumulate in the DAO to token holders, this would be a simple DAO vote. The problem is that so far, the DAO undertakings have not been profitable. So I would reframe the question to: How can we deliver services that will accrue value to the DAO? The repackaging of Gnosis as an onchain cooperative bank is our strategy for this.

The second point I would like to add is that token distribution matters. The GNO holder cashback program was a great success in my eyes because it drove users of our products also to be token holders. We will double down on these dynamics.

[ernst]

@Sam_Trust

1. I understand that the profits generated by the various projects/entities (Pay, Metri, GC, Circles) are meant to flow back to GNO holders. However, if I’m following correctly, it isn’t currently possible to distribute those profits directly. What mechanism would channel profits from each entity to GNO holders or at least to the Gnosis DAO? Would this be done through GNO buybacks, for example? Unfortunately, there is no smart contract in place to verify or enforce such a mechanism for the DAO.
2. How will these values be captured by kpk’s monthly reports? Are the treasuries primary on-chain?

If the operation becomes profitable and money flows back to the DAO, it’s the DAO’s prerogative what to do with these profits. It could simply pay them out to token holders as a dividend. It could do GNO buybacks instead. It could reinvest these profits – or a combination of all three. This is a discussion that the DAO needs to have when the time comes.

I understand your concern about the lack of transparency regarding product profitability. I will make sure we capture this well in the quarterly reports.

[ernst]

@mrtdlgc

The amount requested for expenditures for the following year can only make sense if we have a clear picture on revenue as well. For instance, the highest amount of funding from this $30m ask will apparently go to Gnosis Pay, and Gnosis Pay is projected to have around $1m in revenue. Is there any projection/foresight on where the constituents of Gnosis LTD will turn into self-sustaining entities?

There are, particularly for Gnosis Pay, since it has been operational for a while. I didn’t share them here because I cannot promise them. As they say, predictions are often uncertain, especially if they are about the future – so you have been cautioned! We’re projecting 103k cards by the end of this year and 641k cards by the end of 2026. These are not crazy numbers, they are achievable. In this scenario, revenue for 2025 is 1m, and revenue for 2026 is 7.8m. Costs will also rise, but (obviously) more slowly than revenue.

@mrtdlgc

Or in case some of the constituents causing the leakage of value from the treasury with little to no hope of becoming profitable, would these initiatives be considered as leakage and cut down from the expenses? How can these decisions be made around each entity under the umbrella of Gnosis LTD? Or to what extent the voice of the DAO will be heard and implemented over what to invest in and what not?

We will evaluate projects based on profitability. Things that are not profitable/ are not likely to become profitable and are not necessary for strategic reasons (making them loss leaders), will be cut. We will supply P&L statements for each arm individually to make this transparent. This is the level of abstraction where I think the DAO can excel.

I hear the clear call for clear and expressive quarterly reports. We will do our best to deliver these and iterate over them with the DAO’s feedback.

[Ignas]

As a user, I already use Gnosis more frequently than any other chain

For example, Europeans like me can use the self-custodial GnosisPay card with Monerium’s EURe stablecoin.

We can also cash out EURe directly to fiat EUR via Monerium.

Gnosis for me are crypto OGs, started in 2016 as a prediction market protocol.

So Gnosis Ltd remains the core of all development behind nearly the entire Gnosis stack, including Gnosis Chain, Gnosis Pay, Circles, Gnosis Wallet (formerly Metri), and more.

But Gnosis is not alone in pursuing the ConsumerFi mission: Recently Etherfi has expanded into the territory of Gnosis as well as Mantle is pushing towards crypto x banking area.

So, competition is heating up.

In this context, without funding, Gnosis Ltd may not be able to sustain operations at the current scale, which would directly impact the stability, progress, and user experience across many real life use cases built on Gnosis.

I like the move to unify products under the Gnosis brand will help strengthen identity.

Also echoing @lefterisjp:

@lefterisjp

I still think Gnosis is trying to do way too many things. Retail payments, business payments accounts, UBI, retail wallet, AI agens and more. This shows a lack of focus, and when you are trying to do everything many times you end up doing nothing.

Perhaps the DAO could consider finding partners for certain services, maybe in infrastructure or marketing, to reduce costs and improve operational focus.

And I run PinkBrains, a Creator Studio focused on elevating quality web3 projects through authentic representation. Always open to collaborating, especially on user education and brand awareness efforts around Gnosis and its ecosystem.

A soft shill for us, but that’s because I care about Gnosis succeeding. Truly.

[ernst]

@lefterisjp

1. What is Open Internet Clubs?

The open internet club is a new grassroots initative for nurturing the builder ecosystem on Gnosis. It is about to kick off. I’m linking our internal doc here.

@lefterisjp

2. Can you please do a breakdown of the $2.5m for integrations?

This is a budget and entails integration fees for exchanges (we don’t pay for listings and never have, but we do pay for Gnosis Chain integrations), onramp integrations and stable coin deployments. All of these are to ensure that operating on Gnosis is not painful.

@lefterisjp

3. What is Legal /Personnel and why is it ~2.5x the normal personnerl?

“Personnel” is just the header for our people costs in these various departments. We have a relatively large in house legal team (six people) because we operate in murky waters and making sure we can deliver good ux without anyone being prosecuted is a good north star metric .

@lefterisjp

4. What is Managenent M/SF? Is this the founder’s compensation and stands for Martin, Stefan and Friederike? Is that on top of the normal salaries the founders are getting on that upcoming year? I would assume the founders are very strongly exposed to GNO and as such the success of this plan alone would be an amazing financial reward.

Yes, these are our salaries, it’s not on top of anything. We received a GNO allocation in the token sale eight years ago, so we’re all long GNO; however, I believe paying us a salary is fair nonetheless. I listed these salaries separately because we all work across the products.

[paul2]

The momentum Gnosis has had with its core products in the last year has been fantastic. Very happy to see this roadmap and the additional investment going towards a cohesive story for the network.

I especially appreciate the comments in this thread from @Sam_Trust @staworth and @ernst, which are super helpful.

One thing that strikes me as worth diving into:

One of the core contradictions of the Gnosis Chain ecosystem is the exceptional level of resilience the network has achieved at the protocol level, yet the activity built on top of the network is consolidated into very few single points of failure.

From Gnosis Ltd.'s perspective, I do think this is the right strategy - making bets on just a few products/categories and investing heavily in them gives them the best chance to succeed and drive more value to GNO holders. @lefterisjp even mentions it might be too much activity, which maybe it is.

But at the ecosystem level, there’s very little diversity in Gnosis Chain’s activity - especially compared to other networks with similar TVL. Of course, this could be Gnosis Chain’s competitive advantage - that it’s NOT trying to do too much, not spreading itself too thin. But this strategy seems most effective from within 1 specific organization, and that the ecosystem beyond it should be working to reduce its dependence on Gnosis Ltd. (and Karpatkey) for the health of the network.

As a delegate, my ask for the DAO outside this proposal is that we work towards some basic investments and infrastructure to invite more diversity onto Gnosis Chain.

Gnosis Chain already has nation-state level resilience at the protocol level, so it’d be a waste not to reach nation-state level resilience at the ecosystem level too.

-Paul from Gardens

[refri]

like to throw into this also my 5ct:

1.) I don’t have any doubt the proposal will pass cause to my guess majority of voting power is still in the hands of few, including ltd members/owners

2.) as someone who isn’t a crypto native, just an interested user that found the way here due to the xDAI/Gnosis merger (or takeover), I miss the easy way to get informed about important decisions I was used to when joining the xDAI project where it was enough to follow one telegram chat to felt updated. Ofc Gnosis is much larger and the different entities within the gnosis ecosystem have their own communication culture and channels… but IMO gnosis ltd, as the most important entity should provide much more info whats going on in time (not only if GIPs are to be done).

3.) Posts/proposals from ppl outside the gnosis ecosystem here often lack comments and voting participation from major holders. IMO most likely from gnosis ltd members, I can’t prove it, but it feels like a despise of the DAO and this forum.

4.) I fully agree that funding of gnosis ltd is necessary, and I will support. I don’t have the ability to judge if the amount is reasonable. As others pointed out there could be some more details but even if these data were given I might not be able to judge about this.

5. Feeling and acting as part of the DAO and therefore be much more present on this forum (if it should be the main DAO communication channel) seems most important to me to unify the gnosis projects led by the ltd.
   btw: this also holds true for @Karpatkey, monthly reports might not be enough if some issues (like the one addressed in GIP 127) arise.

In summary: This proposal will pass (most likely will vote for it myself). I remain in hope for more participation of ltd’s owners/employees here to give outsiders the feel of getting informed in time and also let ppl from outside the gnosis ecosystem that are posting here get noticed by the major holders with their ideas.

[john_szczepaniak]

I want to express appreciation for the work Gnosis Ltd and the DAO have put into building a resilient and visionary ecosystem. It takes persistence and a lot of very hard work. Gnosis has consistently proven that they are a dedicated, principled team working on an ambitious roadmap aimed at improving the digital well-being of everyday people.

I hope that we can continue to prioritize and create deeper token integration — whether through more GNO-based rebates, fee discounts, staking incentives, or structuring product earnings to flow (at least in part) to the DAO with a clear path to benefit GNO holders.

With the unification of the Gnosis brand, this is the perfect moment to unify the token as well. Let’s make GNO not just a governance token, but a core utility in the ecosystem’s long-term success!