Are you up for the challenge? Introducing Gnosis X

Build customized prediction market applications on top of Gnosis

Thinking about the endless use cases, their inherent ability of inducing people to acquire and reveal information, and their successful track record when used by both public and private institutions, we find the idea of prediction markets immensely powerful. Gnosis’ prediction markets will drive change in a number of important global markets, including finance, insurance, and information discovery. They can also be used for new forms of distributed, market-based governance protocols, and will provide unique incentivization mechanisms for both local and global economies.

The range of use cases for prediction markets is huge — and we certainly won’t be able to leverage its full potential on our own. Thus, our goal is to make it as easy as possible for developers to build customized dApps on top of Gnosis. We’d like to build out a strong, independent, and yet supported developer community that may ultimately turn Gnosis into the most powerful forecasting tool in the world.

In his recent article about ‘Why Decentralization Matters’, Chris Dixon underlines the potential of decentralized platforms in empowering community building and participation. Ultimately re-architecting the core internet services, cryptoeconomic networks combine decentralized networks with capabilities that will eventually exceed those of the most advanced centralized services: Built on immutable contracts, decentralized networks provide long-term security to participants that a centralized network never could. Decentralized networks hence eliminate counterparty risk, which is driving their adoption and growth.

To help build out such a powerful, decentralized network, we’re super excited to launch Gnosis X — a recurring challenge designed to encourage developers to build prediction market applications on Gnosis.

Throughout the year, we will be announcing different categories for prediction market use cases, with the first ones being released in March. The best application per category will be rewarded with GNO up to $100,000.

A prediction market for the example category Transport & Logistics could, for instance, predict traffic patterns on the mainland or even offshore. Currently, reliable information on whether cargo ships can pass the Northeast Passage between July and October is missing — it usually is frozen during the summer months. A prediction market asking “Will ships be able to pass the Northeast Passage in June?” could aggregate information from locals, meteorologists, or even fishermen and as a result save a tremendous amount of resources through more informed decision-making on crossing the Passage (the Northeast Passage is 6,000 km shorter than the conventional way through the Suez channel).

Image via www.spiegel.de.

Apart from that, several academic studies have shown that prediction markets are useful for tracking and forecasting emerging epidemics [1], and are in fact much more efficient and faster in doing so than other existing surveillance systems. Because information on epidemics often is asymmetrically distributed across multiple professions, the collection and analysis of the information is not amenable to standard statistical methods.

Prediction markets aggregate expert opinion from physicians, nurses, pharmacists, or microbiologists quickly, accurately, and inexpensively, which is of tremendous effect in the prevention of epidemics where timely information allows for planning and allocation of resources to help with treatment and preventative interventions. This use case could be a powerful example in the Gnosis X Healthcare category.

Image via www.imperial.ac.uk

The aforementioned categories and use case examples shall give you an insight into the variety of applications prediction markets have in store. We are already thrilled to see the use cases you come up with! The categories for the first round of Gnosis X will be announced soon.

Given the huge variety of prediction market applications, we think that there shouldn’t be only one winner: our team of developers, business and blockchain experts might also support other promising applications which didn’t make it to the final round with generous grants and continuous assistance.

We’re looking for dApps that strive to aggregate relevant information and carry a clear value-add for the designated category. They should also be easy to use and have an appealing UI. To get you started coding quickly with Gnosis, we will of course provide you with a developer kit containing everything you need for your prediction market application.

Throughout the entire program, we will offer dedicated developer support for participating teams. The applications will be reviewed by Gnosis’ CEO Martin Köppelmann, CTO Stefan George, and a team of business and blockchain experts. In the future, we also plan to involve our developer community to take part in evaluating the different projects.

Since we could never think of and develop all the possible use cases of prediction markets on our own, our aim is to provide a level playing field for developers, creators, and businesses building customized forecasting applications on top of the Gnosis platform. In our next post, we’ll release the start date of the Gnosis X challenge, introduce the Developer Kit, and announce the different use case categories.

We can’t wait to see what you build! 🚀