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).
Populous is a peer-to-peer invoice platform founded in 2017 at a high point in the blockchain and cryptocurrency craze. It makes use of blockchain's distributed ledger technology to provide a global trading platform for invoice financing. According to the Populous website, 'invoice finance is a form of funding that instantly unlocks the cash tied up in outstanding sales invoices. Business owners allow invoice buyers to buy invoices at a discounted rate in order to unlock their cash quicker. Once invoices are paid by the invoice debtor, the invoice buyer receives the amount previously agreed upon.' In order to offer funds to invoice sellers, Populous maintains a Liquidity Pool. This is tied in with the Populous cryptocurrency (PPT). An investor securitizes PPT by making an initial purchase. PPT is then held in escrow as collateral throughout the process. Transactions between invoice buyers and sellers take place with Pokens, exchanged for PPT and used as the currency for buying and selling invoices, either drawing from or contributing to the Liquidity Pool in the process. As a result of this built-in liquidity component, Populous at this point requires no transaction fees. In fact, the only fees levied are those associated with late payments. Populous invoice transactions can cover a huge array of industries, including many which are not typically available to traditional financing companies. The PPT tokens not released during the ICO were retained by the founding and development team. PPT can either be held or used as collateral to invest in Populous invoices. In exchange for collateralizing, you’re given an amount of Pokens based on a percentage of market value. Currently it’s the lesser of 50%, or a 30 day market average. These are automatically used to purchase an invoice. If the invoice is repaid, you receive both your PPT investment and Pokens profit.