CEO of Prediction Market Platform Gnosis: ‘Ethereum Is Blooming and We Are Doubling Down on It’

On Thursday (16 August 2018),  Martin Köppelmann, the co-founder and CEO of prediction market platform Gnosis, said in a blog post (titled “Ethereum is blooming and we are doubling down on it”) that his company was a firm believer in Ethereum (the blockchain that powers Gnosis) and that they were going to do their best to make it “flourish” by implementing a “web3/Ethereum first strategy.”

Not Worried About Price of Ether

Köppelmann says that he and his team are not worried about the drop in the price of Ether (ETH):

“We don’t care too much. Being active in the space since Bitcoin $9 this is nothing new and we prepared for this event. We have a team of over 50 people now working full time on the Gnosis platform and we can continue to finance this for the next 5–7 years without the need to sell any of our ~200k ETH in reserve.”

Best Way to Measure Ethereum’s Success

He then explains that we should measure the success of Ethereum not by the price of Ether, but by the amount of useful, in-demand DApps that take advantage of being on the same platform by co-operating with each other:

“The numbers we care about is the usage of decentralized applications. And as a next step, the number to look out for is DAPPs that seemlessly interact with each other and draw a benefit from being on the same platform. As a side effect, ultimately the price of ETH will then be a function of the demand for the use of applications in this reliable, open, and interlinked envoirment.”

This is a tweet he sent out on 24 July 2018 that expresses in a slightly different way the idea that these types of co-operating DApps create “network effects” for Ethereum:

The best metric of success for #Ethereum is not how many DAPPs are deployed or how many transactions those DAPPs have. It is about how many DAPPs are created and used that use smart contracts from OTHER DAPPs. #networkeffects

— Martin Köppelmann (@koeppelmann) July 24, 2018

When asked by one Twitter user to give an example of this in the context of Gnosis, Köppelmann sent the following reply:

It is only about to begin.
Few examples from Gnosis context:#DutchX uses the @MakerDAO $ price oracle; the 0x token registry and will be itself controlled by a @daostack DAO.
Melon uses Oasisdex… but many more are coming…

— Martin Köppelmann (@koeppelmann) July 24, 2018

Hugh Karp, the founder of Ethereum-powered insurer Nexus Mutual, agrees with Köppelmann:

Ethereum dApp ecosystem is like a flywheel.

Right now it’s really hard to get traction.

When they all start working together it will be unstoppable.

— Hugh Karp (@HughKarp) August 9, 2018

Doubling Down on Ethereum

Köppelmann says that since they have chosen Ethereum to be the “primary envionment” for the platform they are building, it only makes sense if they do all they can to make this environment “flourish”, following the idea that “a rising tide lifts all boats.”

So, what they are going to do is to implement a Web 3.0 (Ethereum DApps) first stategy: “Whenever there is a viable decentralized alternative, we will use it.”

Here are some of the examples he provides:

• “We will use some ETH in reserve for CDPs on Maker”
• “We will give control as soon as possible to DAOs”
• “We will do all tweets first on Peepeth”
• “We will post our blog posts first on Akasha once it is on Mainnet”
• “We will use prediction markets to see if we are on track of our milestones”

Also, he says that they will try to make their contributions to the ecosystem, such as Safe and DutchX, as easy as possible for other DApps to use.

Featured Image Credit: Image Courtesy of Gnosis