Gnosis is a prediction market platform built as a decentralized application (dapp) on the Ethereum network. The platform includes a multisig wallet as well as a Dutch Exchange, but we’re just going to focus on their flagship product, the prediction market, for this guide. More than just building a prediction market, though, Gnosis is creating an entire infrastructure layer that you can use to build your own prediction market app. A prediction market utilizes user predictions to aggregate information about future events. Users in the market trade tokens that represent the outcome of a certain event. Because some outcomes are more likely to occur than others, these tokens end up having different values in the open market.Olympia is Gnosis’s test version of their prediction market app. They host free tournaments in this product, so you get a chance to try it out without having to spend money. Every two days, the team allocates you a certain amount of Olympia (OLY) tokens that you use to bet on different prediction markets. If you do well in the market, you win Gnosis (GNO) tokens. You can sell GNO on the open market which gives them some monetary value. The next phase of Gnosis is its Management Interface. The team released a beta version in December 2017 but haven’t announced a date for the main net release. The Management Interface is basically your dashboard for Gnosis’s prediction markets. It’s here that you check your balance, participate in markets, and even create your own market. Gnosis includes two types of tokens: Gnosis (GNO) and OWL. GNO are the ERC20 tokens that the team sold during their ICO. They created 10 million GNO tokens and aren’t minting any additional ones. These are the tokens that you see being traded on the open market. By staking GNO, you receive OWL tokens. To do this, you must lock your GNO in a smart contract making them non-transferable. The amount of OWL you receive is dependent on the length of your lock period as well as the total supply of OWL tokens in the market. The team is aiming to have 20x more total OWL than the average amount of monthly OWL usage over the previous 3 months. The Gnosis team is led by Martin Köppelmann (CEO), Stefan George (CTO), and Dr. Friederike Ernst (COO). Köppelmann and George began working on the platform in January 2015 as one of the first ConsenSys partners. By August of that same year, they launched the alpha product as the first major dapp on Ethereum. In April 2017, the project held somewhat of a controversial Initial Coin Offering (ICO). Using a dutch auction style of raising funds, the team hit their $12.5 million hard cap in ten minutes while retaining 95% of the tokens. Amidst backlash, the team locked the tokens in a vault and have promised not to dump them on the market. They’ll give at least a three-month warning before selling any of the tokens. The team includes quite a list of reputable advisors including Joseph Lubin (Ethereum co-founder and ConsenSys founder) and Vitalik Buterin (Ethereum founder and chief scientist).
Cortex is built on a new public chain called Cortex. The chain includes AI algorithms that support smart contracts, which means anyone can use Cortex to add AI to their smart contracts. It also creates an incentive mechanism for collective collaboration, allowing anyone to submit and optimize models in Cortex, while model contributors can also be rewarded. The end result of Cortex, according to the whitepaper, is the creation of “artificial general intelligence”, or AGI, “being born on the Cortex”. Cortex completed a private token sale in February/March 2018 for its CTXC tokens. That funding round was led by Bitmain and FBG Capital, among other well-known investors in the cryptocurrency space. Placing artificial intelligence systems on the blockchain isn’t a straightforward process. However, Cortex will solve this problem by allowing machine learning researchers around the world to upload well-trained corresponding data models to the storage layer of the Cortex public chain. Other users who need these AI models can make inferences using the models, then pay the person who developed those models. At each inference, a full node synchronizes the model and the data from the storage tier to the local site. Making an inference using Cortex’s unique virtual machine, or CVM, will synchronize the results to the whole network and then return the result. Every time a user initiates a transaction on the Cortex, opens a smart contract, or performs an intelligence inference, the user will need to pay a certain number of “Endorphin” tokens. Endorphin is the pricing unit for transactions on Cortex. However, the platform will have two tokens, including Endorphins and Cortex Coins (CTXC). The overall goal of Cortex is to provide state-of-the-art machine learning models on the blockchain where users can infer using smart contracts. Cortex also seeks to create a machine learning platform where users can post tasks on the platform or submit artificial intelligence-based decentralized apps. Cortex’s token sale began with a single private placement round. That round took place from February 7 to March 7, 2018, during which tokens were sold at a price of 1 ETH = 1500 CTXC. In March 2018, the company announced that it had reached its target cap of 40,000 ETH for 60 million CTXC, or 20.01% of the total token distribution. FBG Capital and Bitmain were lead investors during the token sale. CTXC tokens are ERC20 tokens on the Ethereum blockchain. There’s a total supply of 299,792,458 tokens. Of the total supply, 50.03% (150 million) are reserved for Cortex coin miners as a mining reward, 24.95% (74,792,458) are dedicated to the project’s foundation from the genesis block (including 15.01% to the Cortex Lab, 9.01% to project marketing, and 0.93% to challenge bounties), with the remaining 5% going to advisors, academia, and the community from the genesis block. Cortex aims to place advanced artificial intelligence systems on the blockchain. The company recently completed a private investment round during its token sale for CTXC tokens in February/March 2018. The next step is to roll out the Cortex public chain. Key features of the platform include its smart AI contracts and its Cortex Virtual Machine, both of which allow for advanced AI-based smart contract programming.