Prediction markets stand to benefit a lot from blockchain technology. We’ve seen several such projects embrace a cryptocurrency-oriented business model as well. Given that cryptocurrency and blockchain are entwined, this is anything but surprising. One of the more popular cryptocurrency-oriented prediction markets is Gnosis. It is a rather interesting project which aims to achieve a lot of big things in the years to come.
Gnosis in a Nutshell
The thing that intrigues people the most about prediction markets is how they operate exactly. In the case of Gnosis, it focuses on market-driven forecasting technology to let users shape the future. Gnosis is built on top of Ethereum and makes use of native smart contract technology to ensure market predictions are recorded in a transparent manner. This allows Gnosis to cut out intermediaries traditionally associated with the prediction market business model.
Why Gnosis Matters and How it Works
There are many different use cases for forecasting technology driven by “the crowd”. From price prediction to governance and even insurance, there is no industry which can’t be affected by prediction markets. Any application built on top of Gnosis allows for the creation of markets associated with every event with an uncertain outcome. Considering how only death and taxes are certain in life, there are a lot of use cases waiting to be tackled.
The smart contracts used by Gnosis can handle the policy side of things. They remove the need for intermediary pricing and paperwork and allow for the crowdsourcing of solid information. Moreover, the markets themselves prove to be rather flexible, which allows for personalized experiences and services. A not-for-profit use case of Gnosis could revolve around research firms collecting external feedback for any form of study that comes to mind. Using the “wisdom of the crowd” can yield some unexpected results along the way.
Although the concept of governance combined with prediction markets may not make much sense at first, there are some interesting options out there that are worth exploring. Rather than relying on individual actors, markets can aggregate information to form the best decisions possible. While this won’t replace boards of directors anytime soon, it is a valuable tool allowing people to band together and realize their vision without rigged votes or similar problems. There may still be some degree of manipulation, but the Gnosis team recently received a DEV grant to ensure that cannot happen on their platform.
The Road Ahead for Gnosis
The year 2018 will be pretty significant for Gnosis in many ways. First of all, the Gnosis Safe Wallet for Android will be released in the next few weeks. Its iOS counterpart comes to market in Q2 of 2018. The Dutch Exchange – a decentralized place for ERC20 tokens – will be the first streamlined trading experience making use of Gnosis technology. Futarchy’s DAO is scheduled to be built in Q3 of 2018 and uses prediction markets to make its decisions. All of these developments are pretty significant in their own way and will bring a lot more attention to this project accordingly.
