GIP: 154
title: Should GnosisDAO fund Gnosis Ltd with $15m/year?
author: Friederike Ernst (@ernst)
status: Phase-3
type: Funding
created: 2026-07-31
- In Favour
- Against
Summary
This is the successor proposal to GIP-128 and requests a grant of $15m in stablecoins, at half of last year’s ask, for a 12-month period starting September 1, 2026, disbursed quarterly to Gnosis Ltd’s Safe.
This would fund our share of the continued development of the Ethereum Economic Zone (EEZ), pay for the evolution of Gnosis Chain as the first EEZ rollup (if that is what the DAO decides), enable Gnosis Pay to cement itself as an enterprise grade stablecoin card program manager, and provide for continued R&D.
The next 12 months are critical not only for Gnosis but for the whole blockchain thesis. We continue to stand for a vision of a credibly neutral, censorship resistant, economic base layer. But that vision has to be married to the practical needs of applications and their users. If we cannot do that, they will not build on blockchain infrastructure in a way that is meaningful and open, and blockchains will end up as a mere backend optimization.
Gnosis has been at the leading edge of that since 2015. We built the constant product AMM model that enabled modern DeFi, the dominant smart contract wallet with Safe, intent-based architectures with CoW Protocol, and the Conditional Token Framework. We are good at solving these hard problems. So we have stripped back to focus on exactly that.
Solving fragmentation with EEZ, building a mainstream-ready adoption layer with Gnosis Chain, and solving the last mile in stablecoin payments with Gnosis Pay.
Gnosis App now requests funding through its own GIP and Gnosis Business has wound down.
In addition, we request a $2m loan for Gnosis Pay. This is strictly a loan, purpose-restricted to float/working capital: it bridges the timing gap between partner-related pass-through costs and the matching partner revenue as volume scales, and is repaid to the DAO as the working-capital need unwinds.
Scope
The grant funds Gnosis Ltd’s three remaining pillars and the shared functions supporting them:
Gnosis Pay is an enterprise-grade stablecoin card programme manager. V2 is live with its first enterprise client, MiniPay, across the EEA and several African markets; the V1 consumer programme shuts down by December 2026, with all clients migrating to V2. By the end of the funding period, we believe $2.5m ARR is an achievable target under our base case, with $4.5m ARR representing an ambitious upside scenario. At approximately $2.5m–$4.5m ARR, the business is expected to achieve positive gross profit and substantially reduce its funding requirements. Additional scale beyond that should improve operating leverage and move the business toward EBITDA profitability. Full detail in The economic case for Gnosis Pay.
Gnosis Chain / EEZ covers the transition of Gnosis Chain into the first EEZ instance, per GIP-153, with genesis targeted for the turn of the year. Gnosis Ltd contributes part of the EEZ association’s budget ($1m has been committed, of which $0.6m falls into this funding period); the cost is shared with other entities funding the EEZ (the EF and Octant, with others in active talks). Full detail in The economic case for Gnosis Chain and GIP-153.
Circles is a deliberately small position, under 5% of the budget. It covers keeping the protocol and infrastructure alive, plus one focused, low-cost experiment: a local community currency built on Circles, starting in Kreuzberg, Berlin, onboarding local merchants and residents into a new acceptance network. Circles adoption has worked in Berlin before, and the Overton window for community currencies is open now. If we can make Circles happen, it will be an extremely sticky application for Gnosis Chain.
Budget Breakdown
| This proposal | GIP-128 | Change | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gnosis Pay | $6.0m | $8.0m | −25% |
| Circles | $0.7m | $1.5m | −53% |
| Core and Infra | $3.572m | $3.6m | −1% |
| BD + Marketing | $1.53m | $5.885m¹ | −74% |
| Legal | $0.96m | $1.625m | −41% |
| Finance | $0.57m | $0.59m | −3% |
| HR and Ops | $0.35m | $0.45m | −22% |
| Personnel overhead (travel, equipment, software, offices) | $0.8m | $1.5m | −47% |
| Management (M/S/F) | $0.508m | $0.45m | +13% |
| Gnosis App | — | $3.1m | own GIP |
| Gnosis Business | — | $2.9m | wound down |
| Gnosis Labs | — | $0.4m | discontinued as a separate line |
| Total | $14.99m | $30.0m | −50% |
¹ GIP-128’s BD and DevRel ($3.85m) plus Marketing and design ($2.035m).
Detail on the larger categories:
| Core and Infra | $3.572m |
|---|---|
| Personnel | $1.772m |
| AWS and GCloud, AI, hosting other, dune | $0.68m |
| Audits and bounties | $0.1m |
| Safe | $0.2m |
| Tenderly | $0.22m |
| EEZ remainder committed grant | $0.6m |
| BD + Marketing | $1.53m |
|---|---|
| Salaries | $0.81m |
| Events | $0.27m |
| Integrations (Fireblocks, CEXes, oracles etc.) | $0.2m |
| PR agency | $0.15m |
| External & marketing spend | $0.1m |
| Finance | $0.57m |
|---|---|
| Personnel | $0.41m |
| External service providers | $0.09m |
| Software | $0.07m |
Reporting and Accountability
- Quarterly reports detailing spend and progress across all budget categories, continuing the GIP-128 practice, including TPV, net revenue, burn, and partner go-lives for Gnosis Pay.
- We will continue the quarterly community calls.
Closing Note
This ask is half of last year’s. It reflects the consolidation of the past year: Gnosis Business was wound down, Gnosis App now stands on its own, Gnosis Pay has narrowed to the B2B model that is working, and Gnosis Chain has a defensible path to sustainability through the EEZ. Fewer business lines mean more focus per team and a smaller budget. We believe the three pillars in this proposal are the right bets, funded at the level they need, and we look forward to the discussion.