Gnosis

Gnosis Chain is an EVM-based network that began as the xDai Chain and took its current name after a GnosisDAO proposal of November 2021, GIP-16, to merge the STAKE and GNO tokens and develop the network under the Gnosis name. Users pay transaction fees in xDAI, a stablecoin that the bridge mints when DAI arrives from Ethereum, so fees are not exposed to the price swings of a volatile gas token. A new block follows every five seconds, and the network runs under chain ID 100.

Validators secure the network with GNO, the token that also carries the votes in GnosisDAO. A validator needs only 1 GNO, compared with the 32 ETH that Ethereum requires, and Gnosis Chain runs the same client software as Ethereum, such as Nethermind and Lighthouse, with minor parameter changes. Gnosis counts more than 145,000 validators, many of them home stakers, and their rewards vary with network participation as with other proof-of-stake validators.

The next step is the Ethereum Economic Zone (EEZ), a rollup framework that Gnosis builds with the team at Zisk and that the Ethereum Foundation co-funds. Gnosis Chain is to upgrade to the EEZ in 2027 with the same contracts and addresses, so that applications can call contracts on Ethereum mainnet within one atomic transaction. For euro payments the chain already carries EURe from Monerium, regulated euro e-money that Gnosis Pay cards spend at Visa merchants.

Early work at Gnosis focused on prediction markets, and in 2017 its engineers brought the constant product formula onchain to price such markets, a formula that Uniswap later built on. The Conditional Token Framework followed in 2018 as an open standard for tokenizing outcomes, and every market on Polymarket runs on it. Intent-based trading with solver networks started in 2020 with Gnosis engineers and CoW Protocol, which protects traders from MEV.

Safe, formerly Gnosis Safe, is a smart account wallet that the holders of digital assets control themselves, without a custodian. Its team proposed in GIP-29 of 9 February 2022 to spin the project off from Gnosis Ltd into an independent SafeDAO, with a fixed supply of 1 billion SAFE tokens and a Safe Foundation in Switzerland for intellectual property and code repositories. Under the proposal, 15 percent of the supply vests to the GnosisDAO treasury over four years, and 5 percent goes to a joint treasury of the two DAOs.

More than 63 million smart accounts run on Safe today, and the accounts have processed more than $1 trillion. Safe, CoW Protocol and Gnosis Guild were all built inside Gnosis and released by a GnosisDAO vote. Gnosis Pay uses the same technology, because each cardholder holds a self-custodial wallet in the form of a Safe on Gnosis Chain that funds every card payment.

Gnosis Pay sells white-label card infrastructure to wallets, neobanks, crypto exchanges and payment processors that want to issue their own stablecoin cards. Virtual cards go live within minutes and physical cards within days, while settlement with the Visa network runs on T+1. The funds of each user stay in a Safe smart account, and the same API connects fiat accounts with a euro IBAN or with Pix in Brazil. By its own count, Gnosis Pay has processed more than $180 million in payments.

In 2025 Gnosis Pay shifted its focus from its own consumer card to card programs for partner apps, and it now calls itself an enterprise platform and card program manager. Under a formal notice of 21 September 2026, the Gnosis Pay card and the web app stop working at 23:59 UTC on 20 December 2026. Cardholders keep the funds in their Safe and can withdraw them without a deadline, or they move to partner apps such as Rebind, MiniPay, Picnic, Zeal and the Gnosis App.

Monavate issues the Gnosis Pay cards, and Gnosis Pay acts as program manager and technical services provider for the issuer. Cardholders in the European Economic Area contract with UAB Monavate, an electronic money institution in Vilnius that the Bank of Lithuania authorized under code LB002139. Cardholders in the UK and other non-EEA countries contract with Monavate Ltd, which the Financial Conduct Authority regulates under firm reference number 901097. The cards run under a license from Visa Europe, and the euro token EURe on them comes from Monerium EMI ehf., an electronic money institution in Iceland.

Gnosis Pay Co Ltd is registered in England and Wales under company number 14919639, was incorporated on 7 June 2023 and has its office at 12 New Fetter Lane in London. For residents of the EEA, the contracting party is Gnosis P. Tech, Unipessoal Lda, a company in Lisbon with the Portuguese company number 517 666 898. Gnosis Ltd itself is registered in Gibraltar under company number 115571, with its registered office at the World Trade Center on Bayside Road.

Gnosis Pay is a card program manager that lets wallets and fintechs issue Visa debit cards, which draw stablecoins directly from the self-custodial Safe of the user. The cards spend euro, pound and dollar stablecoins at a 1:1 rate, so a purchase of €10 uses 10 EURe from the Safe.

The Gnosis Pay card stops at 23:59 UTC on 20 December 2026, when the web app also closes for everything except withdrawals. Partner apps that move to the new Gnosis Pay platform issue their own cards, and Rebind, MiniPay and Picnic are among the apps that former cardholders can switch to.

GNO is the token for staking on Gnosis Chain and for voting in GnosisDAO, and one validator needs 1 GNO. Holders without a node of their own can use liquid staking through StakeWise, which issues the sGNO token in return, as with other forms of crypto staking.

Gnosis Safe was the multisig wallet that the Safe team built inside Gnosis, in which several keys have to sign before funds move. After the GIP-29 vote the project left Gnosis Ltd, and in July 2022 it took the name Safe under the independent SafeDAO.

Gnosis Chain uses the Beacon Chain consensus and the client software of Ethereum, so developers deploy contracts with the usual Ethereum tools. The economics differ, because fees are paid in xDAI instead of ETH and a validator stakes 1 GNO instead of 32 ETH.