GnosisVC Fund I - Q2 2026 Update

General
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Portfolio Updates

New Q2 investment: Sorted

GnosisVC participated in the latest funding round of Sorted as a co-lead investor alongside Tether.

https://x.com/sortedwallet/status/2056989549444632764

Sorted is a payments middleware company building infrastructure for stablecoin payments in emerging markets. Their core product is a non-custodial, ultra-light wallet designed to operate across low-end Android devices, KaiOS feature phones, and RTOS devices. This is not just another crypto-native wallet competing for the already saturated high-end smartphone users; rather, it acts as a distribution and customer-acquisition layer for stablecoin remittances, merchant payments, and local PSP aggregation in markets where device constraints, remittance costs, and fragmented cash-out infrastructure remain major bottlenecks.

At the time of GnosisVC’s investment decision, Sorted had already demonstrated meaningful early traction in terms of app downloads, active users, transaction volumes and presence across 165 countries. User acquisition economics also stood out as comparatively favourable for an emerging-market fintech product, with a customer lifetime value to acquisition cost ratio (LTV/CAC) above 20x.

The strategic fit is, in our view, straightforward. Sorted extends stablecoin payment infrastructure into user segments and device categories that most Web3 products do not currently reach. It also creates potential integration paths with Gnosis Pay, SAFE smart accounts, Gnosis Chain, and Euro-denominated stablecoin infrastructure to open additional payment corridors that are complementary to Gnosis’ current user base. The PSP marketplace model is an additional benefit: rather than relying on a single off-ramp or liquidity provider, Sorted integrates multiple PSPs per corridor, creating redundancy across pricing, cash-out reliability, FX, and settlement.

Selected portfolio highlights

To support GnosisVC portfolio companies, we continue to focus mainly on integrations across the Gnosis ecosystem, particularly in the core areas of stablecoin payment infra and its crossover to RWAs.

Inflow (stablecoin payments for e-commerce, invested in Q1 2025) [link: https://x.com/Inflowpay]: continued to strengthen its position as a payments and stablecoin infrastructure layer, with ongoing progress in transaction volume, stablecoin conversion flows, and integrations relevant to Gnosis Pay and broader settlement infrastructure. The company remains well-positioned to contribute to real-world payment adoption within the ecosystem.

Bermuda (compliance/privacy-tech, invested in Q2 2025): progressed from privacy tooling into a compliant private settlement layer for on-chain securities and payments. The product combines issuer-defined policy controls, auditable compliance, and native execution so assets can settle privately where liquidity already exists, rather than through a separate privacy chain. The company is now preparing its next growth round, with the current plan centered on becoming bank-ready over the next 18 months through security hardening, audits, enterprise features, stablecoin-partner pilots, and regulatory engagement.

Monerium and Schuman Financial remain central to Gnosis’ regulated Euro-stablecoin and payments stack. Monerium continues to provide critical infrastructure for regulated EUR stablecoins, including seamless SEPA transferability and on/off-ramp functionality across Gnosis Pay and SAFE. Schuman Financial continues to expand the reach of EUROP and related infrastructure across various chains, CoW Swap, SAFE, and Gnosis Pay, reinforcing the ecosystem’s position within MiCA-aligned Euro stablecoin markets.

Pipeline & Market

The fund continues to evaluate opportunities across its three core verticals: Payments Middleware, Real World Assets, and Decentralized Infrastructure.

Engagement statistics since fund creation

The table below shows the statistics of the deal pipeline from the fund’s inception until Q2 2026, grouped by category.

Quarter Total Projects screened Payments Middleware Real World Assets Decentralized Infrastructure DeFi / Other
2024 Q3 23 6 4 8 5
2024 Q4 27 5 6 9 7
2025 Q1 31 6 6 8 11
2025 Q2 23 7 5 6 5
2025 Q3 26 8 4 9 5
2025 Q4 17 5 3 5 4
2026 Q1 12 3 3 4 2
2026 Q2 19 4 5 6 4
Total from inception 180 44 36 57 43

The main trend is a moderation in active engagement after the high-volume period from Q3 2024 through Q3 2025, which is not surprising given the general slowdown of crypto markets following the October 2025 flash crash and the typical 3-6 months lag of private market activity versus public/liquid markets. The number of processed inbound deals peaked in H2 2025 and reached a low point in the first half of this year.

Q1 + Q2 2026 pipeline details:

During Q2 2026 we engaged with the following projects (the list includes some overlap from the Q1 2026 pipeline in cases where the deal review overlapped from one quarter into the next one).

Q2 2026 screened / reviewed projects:

Vertical Projects
Decentralized Infrastructure / AI Servamind, Agora, Botanika, Egregore, SAFU, Fortytwo, ZKorum
Real World Assets Pareto, Ampli, Fido, yield.fm / MNFST, Tradevu, ST0x
Payments ViFi, MultiHopper, Pulsar, Superset, Jenzy, CitizenPa
DeFi Polaris, Bond.Credit, VANT, Agra, Predexon

Q2 included one executed investment, Sorted, and several projects that progressed from initial screening on to the due diligence stage, such as Pareto, Servamind, CitizenPay and Polaris.

H1 2026 observations across vertical categories

The strongest H1 theme was the continued concentration of relevant opportunities around stablecoin payments, settlement, FX, and emerging-market distribution. Sorted was the clearest example of this, but other H1 opportunities such as ViFi, Jenzy, Pulsar, Zynta, CitizenPay, and MultiHopper suggest that payments middleware remains one of the most active and strategically relevant parts of the pipeline.

RWA activity remained active but diligence-heavy. Pareto, Polaris, Ampli, yield.fm / MNFST, Fido, ST0x, and Tradevu all sit somewhere in the RWA, tokenized yield, credit, or financial-asset infrastructure universe. We generally set a high bar for the differentiation angles of such projects and are most interested where legal structure, asset quality, compliance, and distribution are credible, rather than where the pitch is simply “tokenized XYZ”.

Decentralized infrastructure activity increasingly skewed toward AI and agent infrastructure. Servamind, Botanika, Fortytwo, Egregore, Bond.Credit, and related projects show that AI infrastructure remains a large inbound category. However, the underwriting for very early stage projects in this category is challenging due to the fast pace of development. Many AI projects lack defensible decentralization, clear monetization, or sufficient technical differentiation. For these reasons among others (such as lack of strategic fit), we remain very selective on this vertical.

The market remains saturated with token/SAFT-style opportunities. The fund continues to be cautious where token optionality is the primary financing narrative. The strongest opportunities continue to be those with real usage, credible distribution, regulatory or UX defensibility, and direct Gnosis ecosystem relevance.

The broader pipeline remains active, but the conversion from raw inbound to calls to deeper diligence remains very narrow as we intentionally apply strict filtering criteria. GnosisVC continues to focus on companies that can succeed independently while also expanding the strategic surface area of the Gnosis ecosystem across the core verticals outlined above.

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About the KaiOS wallet. We used to do a wallet for Nano. We wanted to get it into the KaiOS store.
Turns out you either permanently book ads on their platform (at least 20k as I remember).
Nano wanted to cover it to get it into the store, but it never happened, out of principle mostly.
Alternatively, you can include their ad scripts. Since KaiOS runs on a stone old version of Firefox, I was not willing to get users into this attack surface.

So. Coming form that background. I have been wondering. Where is the source code for all of those wallets? I cannot find anything on their website.

I HIGHLY RECOMMEND you audit it, before you start pushing another attack vector again.
Gnosis has a HUGE track record of incompetence and ignorance. I would love it to stop here right now.

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Hi @citrullin, Sorted team here. Sorry to hear your Nano wallet never made it into the KaiOS store. Since the comment is about us, we wanted to reply directly.

On the KaiOS store, ads and payments

We can only speak for ourselves, but what you describe doesn’t match our experience at all:

• We don’t run ads in the Sorted app, on KaiOS or anywhere else, and there is no ad SDK in the app (KaiAds or otherwise).

• We have never paid for placement in the KaiOS store and were never asked to. The 20k figure you mention has simply never come up in any of our dealings with them.

• We’ve worked with the KaiOS team since early on and our app went through their normal store review.

For what it’s worth, we agree with you that ad scripts don’t belong in a wallet. There are none in ours.

On source code

Fair question. We’re a private company and our own code is not open source. That said, the wallet is built on many components of Tether’s WDK, which is fully open source and can be inspected by anyone: Tether · GitHub

Security is central to how we build, and if you have specific concerns about the app we’re happy to hear them. You can reach us directly at hello@sorted.io.

Happy to answer any follow-ups here.

The Sorted team

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That’s quite the shame. Not the values I would consider this DAO is supposed to have.

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Wait. I just realized the way you framed it. Nono. They wanted to make us pay for ads in order to get into the store without having to use their ad sdk.
So basically we had two options:

  • Run an ad campaign (and getting rid of that js ad sdk in the wallet)
  • Accept to run ads in your app (which introduces an attack vector)

So, my question is: Did you do any of that?

/edited block

To broaden my question: Did you, by ANY means, pay, give equity, token or something other that could be considered a payment of sorts in a legal court to the companies behind KaiOS?

Apparently you got 500k users. Can I see the audit documents you created in the acquisition process?

Did you pay, by any legal means, for app installs? (also known as pay per install)
e.g. paying mobile provider, OEMs etc. anything that gets you those installs.
Can I see the documents for it and the user metrics for those users compared to the rest?

Do you have any idea about the MAU? (e.g. through transactions. Provide all documents, please)
Can I get the onchain data references to all of these users?
500k on Gnosis must be glaringly obvious to show some legit verifiable data for.

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Hi @citrullin,

Since you’re asking how the numbers came about, happy to give a fuller answer on how growth actually works for an app like ours.

A new wallet cannot rely on living organically in an app store. Store search volume for crypto terms on feature phones is tiny, discovery algorithms favour incumbents with years of accumulated installs and ratings, and in our markets a store listing is honestly one of the weaker discovery channels anyway. Most of our users don’t browse an app store the way someone in Berlin or San Francisco does. So from day one the strategy has been to build demand outside the store and treat the store as the place people land, not the place they find us.

It helps to understand who our users are and what they hold in their hands. They’re across Africa and South and Southeast Asia, and the devices there are not the ones this forum is probably typing on. Transsion is the top phone seller in Africa and has arguably done more for the continent’s digital transformation than any Western brand, through its three brands Tecno, Infinix and itel, and alongside them Oppo, Vivo and Honor dominate large parts of our markets. Every one of those manufacturers runs its own app store that ships preloaded on the device, and in many of our markets those OEM stores matter as much as or more than Google Play. So we do a lot of store work there: separate listings, separate localization, separate creative, separate review processes and separate ranking quirks for each of them. These are also devices with 1 or 2 GB of RAM, sometimes less, running operating systems that aggressively kill background apps to survive. RAM shortage is a daily engineering constraint for us, not a footnote, and it shapes everything from app size to how the app behaves in store vitals, which in turn feeds back into how those stores rank us.

All of that shapes the store work itself, which is the full app store optimization playbook and then a lot more around it. ASO is not one trick, it’s an ongoing discipline, so bear with us because the detail matters here.

It starts with keyword research per market and per language: what someone in Lagos types into a store search is not what someone in Dhaka types, and neither is searching in English half the time, so keyword sets get built and refreshed per locale, seasonality included. Those feed into the metadata layer: titles, subtitles and long descriptions written and localized per store, because every store weighs those fields differently and a title that ranks in one store does nothing in another. Then the creative layer: icons, screenshots, feature graphics and preview videos, each A/B tested continuously, because store conversion rate is itself a ranking input, meaning a better screenshot doesn’t just convert more visitors, it makes the algorithm show you to more of them. On top of that sits reputation management: prompting for ratings at the right moments, responding to reviews in local languages, keeping ratings velocity healthy because stores reward apps that are being rated recently, not just rated well. Then the technical signals: update cadence (stores boost recently updated apps), app size (a hard constraint on the devices we serve, and one reason the app is as small as it is), crash rates and vitals, which stores increasingly fold into ranking. Add category strategy per store, since the right category with weaker competition beats the obvious category where you’re buried on page five. And finally featuring: pitching store editorial teams for placements, which is earned, relationship-driven work. Every serious consumer app does all of this, in every store it’s listed in, and so do we, times the number of markets and languages we operate in.

Around that sits the paid and earned mix, which over the years has included pretty much every channel there is: newspaper ads, radio, out-of-home in local markets, influencer and KOL campaigns on the platforms our users are actually on, community and campus ambassador programmes, referral mechanics, partnerships across the mobile ecosystem, and yes, paid promotion within app stores, which is a standard line item in any app marketing budget on earth. Different channels in different countries at different times, measured on cohort retention and cost per retained user like everyone else, with the ones that don’t retain getting cut.

If you’re interested in how this world actually works, we’d genuinely recommend The Transsion Approach by Miao Lu (University of Illinois Press): https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/?id=c046926. It’s full of insight on the intersection of Chinese mobile technology and African digital development and how Transsion and its peers came to define the continent’s devices, and it informs our thinking a great deal as we grow.

As for which channels we used where, on what terms, and what any of it cost: we’re a private company. We appreciate the interest, but we don’t discuss our commercial arrangements or internal data outside of the company.

We’ll leave it there and get back to building.

All the best.

The Sorted team

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Let’s be crystal clear: You do not get to treat a public, decentralized DAO treasury as your private corporate runway faucet while hiding behind the confidentiality shield of a closed corporation.

If you want the absolute secrecy and insulation of a private enterprise, go pitch traditional venture capital firms on their own dime. If you are asking GNO token holders to underwrite your operational costs, you owe this community absolute, unvarnished, line-item accountability.

Dumping millions of dollars of public community capital into an unaccountable corporate black box is a total perversion of why this DAO exists. If your data is a corporate secret, then your funding should be privately sourced too. Let’s see how the GNO holders feel about funding an unaccountable void when the voting opens.

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@SortedTeam welcome to the forum, and thank you for both replies. The detail you gave on distribution and OEM stores in markets most of this forum doesn’t operate in was very informative, and going to that length for a first thread here is appreciated.

@citrullin your KaiOS background is directly relevant here and the open-source question was worth asking. But SortedTeam answered you in good faith twice, and a good-faith answer deserves better than escalation. A private company declining to publish its commercial terms isn’t evidence of misconduct.

The question of how GnosisVC diligences portfolio companies and what reporting the DAO can expect on deployed capital that is outlined in their proposal - it isn’t SortedTeam’s role to answer on GnosisVC’s behalf. If your view is that GnosisVC’s diligence and disclosure standard is too loose that’s fine, but make it about GnosisVC rather than aim it at a portfolio company.

@SortedTeam thanks again, and looking forward to following Sorted’s progress.

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Hi Kenk,

Appreciate the response. Let’s separate the tone from the systemic reality here, because this isn’t an attack on a portfolio company, it is a fundamental critique of the funding pipeline.

No one is alleging legal misconduct. A private company keeping its books closed is normal corporate behavior. What isn’t normal though, and what directly contradicts the foundational ethos of a decentralized autonomous organization, is using public community capital to fund a zero-disclosure corporate runway.

When a project transitions from traditional VC backing to pulling millions from a public, public-interest DAO treasury, the standard of accountability changes. You cannot leverage the liquidity and public-good narrative of a DAO on one hand, while wrapping yourself in the absolute insulation of private enterprise confidentiality on the other.

If SortedTeam cannot disclose these metrics because of corporate constraints, that points to a systemic flaw in how GnosisVC structures its pipeline. If GNO token holders are underwriting these operations, they are the LPs. They deserve line-item clarity, not a firewall.

If the current disclosure standard is "trust the black box”, then that is exactly what the community needs to vote on. Let’s see where the GNO holders stand on funding unaccountable voids when the proposal hits the floor.

Back to the code. Have a good weekend.

/e Ultimately, you cannot choose to accept public DAO funds with one hand and hide behind private corporate immunity with the other. If you take the community’s capital, you answer to the community, it’s as simple as that.

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@citrullin GnosisDAO is an LP in GnosisVC, agreed via GIP-102, and nothing in that proposal places a reporting obligation on portfolio companies. The obligation runs from the fund to its LPs, which is exactly what the update you’re posting under is.

What you’re arguing for, and/or making accusations around, is your preferred standard rather than one the DAO has adopted, so please stop putting it to companies as though they were in breach of an obligation that doesn’t exist. If you believe this is the right way, you need to create a GIP that modifies 102.

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Thanks for the report. I have some questions. I apologize in advance if the answers were already given previously and I simply missed them.

Reporting Cadence

GIP-102 committed to “quarterly reports on the investment portfolio posted on DAO forum.” The Q4 2024 update noted: “We’ll generally aim to post updates 3-4 weeks after the end of each quarter.”

Five quarters are missing (Q1 2025 through Q1 2026, inclusive). Will you commit to a posting date for the Q3 2026 report? And do the fund documents give LPs any recourse when reporting obligations are not met?

Fund Closing Status

GIP-102 targeted $40M, with $20M from external LPs. The Q4 2024 update mentioned commitments from 10 investors. Did the external $20M close, and what is total committed capital today? If LP names are confidential, can you share the aggregate closed amount and the LP mix by category (strategic investors, funds, individuals, Investment Committee members)?

Capital Account

Treasury reports show the DAO has paid in roughly $13.4M across two capital calls. Please publish the basics every LP report contains: total called from all LPs, total invested by company, cash on hand, management fees paid to date, and whether the 2% fee runs on committed or called capital.

At the stated 2% on a $40M target, management fees would be up to $800k per year, roughly $1.5M to date. Is that the actual base, and what has actually been paid, and to which entity?

Before the vote, @jackgale.eth raised concerns about committing to “$400k in 2% management fees per year for 7 years to 4 members of an investment committee without any information on their investing credentials” (his figure being the DAO’s half). Two years on, I would add: very limited reporting on performance.

Fund I Portfolio List

How many companies or entities has Fund I invested in, and which ones? This update names five. The Q4 2024 update named Monerium, Tokenize.it, FLock, and Picnic, plus four pending. Perhaps a simple table would be helpful: company name, quarter, instrument.

Also, to my knowledge, Monerium, Schuman, and Bermuda Bay are on the Gnosis Ventures website, but Tokenize.it, FLock, Picnic, Inflow, and Sorted are not.

Valuations

GIP-146 mandated consolidated valuations of illiquid holdings. When GIP-151 needed a number, the portfolio was priced at a 60% discount to called capital because no mark existed. Will you publish cost and fair value per position, or at minimum a portfolio-level NAV with methodology, each quarter?

Impairments

Highlights are welcome, but LP reports also disclose write-downs. Have any Fund I positions been impaired or written off to date? Three of the four named 2024 investments (Tokenize.it, FLock, Picnic) received no mention in the Q2 2026 update.

GIP-151 states: “GnosisVC has invested approximately $13M across two of three capital calls. For this redemption, the portfolio is valued at a 60% discount to capital called, or $5.2M.” How should GNO holders read that discount? If it reflects actual portfolio performance, the write-downs belong in this report. If it was purely an illiquidity adjustment, what is the fund’s own estimate of fair value, and why was a 60% discount to a healthy portfolio considered fair to redeeming holders?

The Legacy Book

The Gnosis Ventures page mixes some Fund I deals (not all, as previously noted) with roughly 60 pre-fund investments, unlabeled, and several of those have shut down or gone dormant. Which positions on that page belong to Fund I? Were any warehoused or legacy positions transferred into the fund at cost, and at what amounts? And who is responsible for reporting on the legacy venture book, which appears in no fund report?

Public Data Room

GIP-102 promised a data room, and Ben (Gnosis VC) wrote in the thread that there was “no intention to limit or tier access” to it. Does it exist, and how does a GNO holder access it?

Thanks again!

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I posted this two weeks ago, zero response. Are my questions fair? Do you plan on responding? If not, please just say so and I won’t bother posting any more annoying questions!

Gnosis VC is a 40 million USD venture, with 20 million USD coming from the DAO directly. Do you think this level of transparency is acceptable for a venture fund of this size?

The DAO + LPs are paying 800k USD per year in fees (I guess?) for a dedicated team and yet this entire venture is one huge black box with almost no accountability. You committed to quarterly updates, then didn’t bother to submit them for 5 quarters! What you did finally release was, as documented in my questions above, severely lacking.

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The fund has raised only limited additional capital (about $2.5M was committed). The expectation of easily raising additional funding was not realistic. We attribute this to the general negative sentiment, which made it difficult for most VCs to raise, and also to the fact that we mixed an ecosystem fund with a VC fund. Most ecosystem funds are not profitable, which was seen as a red flag during the fundraising efforts.

The management fee was calculated on the committed capital, so roughly $400k per year. A significant part of the fund’s legal expenses is paid to Gnosis LTD in exchange for legal consultancy services.

Because of the current crypto bear market, the VC has decided not to call any further capital from LPs. Currently, roughly 70% of the capital has been called. The team is focused on investing the remaining capital and going into maintenance mode afterwards, taking care of the already existing investments first.

The most important positions in the fund are: Monerium, Schumann, Sorted, Yodl, Bermuda Bay, Inflow, Tokenize.it, Picnic, Caplend and Align.

We are expecting returns for most of the investments made. The 60% discount is mainly an illiquidity adjustment.

Investments made by Gnosis LTD in the past remained within the LTD and are not the responsibility of the GnosisVC team.