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).
iExec is an open-source, decentralized cloud computing platform, running on Ethereum blockchain. iExec allows decentralized applications (dApps) an on-demand access to computing resources and technologies on iExec cloud. iExec has built a blockchain network where dApps can take advantage of cost effective and high-performance resources such as servers, databases, SaaS applications, web hosting and computer farms. iExec’s native cryptocurrency — The RLC token is the primary asset used to access services in iExec infrastructure. RLC is short for “Run on Lots of Computers.” iExec is headquartered at Lyon, France. It was founded by Gilles Fedak and Haiwu He, both are serving as Chief Executive Officer and Head of Asian-Pacific Region of iExec, respectively. Oleg Lodygensky is the Chief Technical Officer. Gilles Fedak received his PhD from the University of Paris Sud in 2003, and has been working as INRIA (Inventeurs du Monde Numerique) research scientist at ENS in Lyon, France. Similarly, Haiwu completed his M.Sc. and PhD from the University of Sciences and Technologies of Lille, France. On April 19, 2017, iExec launched its token sale and raised more than $12 million in exchange for 86,999,784 RLC. In order to support dApps, smart contracts, and their platforms, iExec takes processing-intensive computations off-chain so as to keep a blockchain’s on-chain functions running smoothly. To do this, iExec makes use of XtremWeb-HEP, an open-sourced Desktop Grid Software. Desktop Grid computing (also known as Volunteer Computing) pools unused computing resources to be used by applications and platforms, and according to iExec’s whitepaper, XtremWeb-HEP “implements all the needed features” to make this possible on a global scale, including “fault-tolerance, multi-applications, multi-users, hybrid public/private infrastructure, deployment of virtual images, data management, security and accountability, and many more.” Essentially, with this software, dApps can utilize any computing resource in the iExec framework to run their programs. In their whitepaper, the iExec team lays out the project’s competitive landscape and explains these competitors in relation to iExec. They’re quick to note that decentralized cloud storage providers like Filecoin, Storj, and Siacoin are not direct competitors, and it’s easy to see why. While iExec could theoretically take a step in this direction as it matures, it’s not a storage platform; it’s a computing platform. This does put it in competition with other decentralized computing protocols like Golem and SONM. Both of these, however, are taking aim at a different animal. Essentially, they’re both building a decentralized supercomputer on blockchain technology, while iExec is targeting dApp development and sustainability. Both look towards a future of a blockchain-powered, decentralized internet, but their functions, while sometimes similar, are more complementary than conflicting.