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GnosisDAO Governance Summary ~ Year in Review 2025

2025 was the year GnosisDAO successfully transitioned from the "infrastructure layer" to the "everyday layer." It was a year defined by Gnosis 3.0: a pivot from building back-end middleware to delivering user-owned financial applications like Gnosis Pay, Gnosis VPN, and Circles V2.

Here is a more comprehensive recap of the milestones that defined the year:

🏛️ 2025: The Year of Ownership

This year, the GNO token was solidified as the heart of an ecosystem that returned control of value, data, and identity to the individual.

💰 A New Standard for Tokenomics (GIP-116)

The year began with a historic fulfillment of GnosisDAO's "Sound Tokenomics" mandate. By completing the 3.15M GNO burn, aligning long-term scarcity with the ecosystem’s growth.

💳 Gnosis Pay: The $100M Milestone

Gnosis Pay moved from a pilot to a powerhouse, processing over $100 million in lifetime card volume and nearing 1 million transactions. By bridging the gap between Visa’s legacy network and Gnosis Chain’s open rails, Gnosis Pay proved that self-custodial finance is ready for everyday use cases.

🌐 Gnosis VPN: Privacy as a Protocol

With the establishment of Seldon Inc (GIP-129), the DAO launched its most ambitious infrastructure project to date. Gnosis VPN, built on the HOPR mixnet, aligns with the long-term view at Gnosis that access to an uncensorable internet, masking both data and metadata, is a fundamental right. By creating a standalone entity, the DAO has ensured that Gnosis VPN has the legal and technical scaffolding to reach the global market independently.

🤝 Circles V2: Money for a Multipolar World

In May, Circles V2 went live, reimagining currency as a social trust network. By allowing anyone to issue their own digital currency without banks or gatekeepers, Circles provided a human-centric alternative to the centralized digital currencies being explored by institutions.

🛡️ Proactive Security & Sovereignty

The DAO demonstrated its commitment to user protection and chain integrity through decisive actions:

  • The Fund Recovery Hard Fork (December 2025): Validators acted to secure $9.4M in assets following a Balancer exploit, prioritizing community safety while sparking a healthy industry-wide debate on blockchain immutability.
  • Snapshot Revamp (GIP-140): A technical overhaul moved governance to native on-chain strategies, ensuring that every GNO holder's voice is tracked with the highest cryptographic accuracy.

🏛️ How GnosisDAO Votes: Quorum & Participation

To ensure that all major changes have the backing of a committed majority, every Gnosis Improvement Proposal (GIP) must pass a formal Snapshot vote after its initial forum discussion.

  • The 75k Rule: For a proposal to pass, it must achieve a majority of 'YES' votes AND meet a hard quorum of 75,000 GNO cast in favor.
  • Abstentions: While 'Abstain' votes allow members to signal presence, they do not count toward the 75,000 GNO quorum requirement.
  • Docs: To learn more about the proposal lifecycle, visit the Gnosis DAO Documentation.

🏛️ The 2025 Snapshot Archive

  • GIP-144: Blockscout 2026 Renewal — PASSED (110 votes)
  • GIP-143: Terminate kpk Treasury Services — PASSED (80 votes)
  • GIP-140: Revamp Snapshot voting strategies — PASSED (82 votes)
  • GIP-137: Renew the Delegate Program — REJECTED (92 votes)
  • GIP-139: Support ProbeLab P2P Metrics — REJECTED (Fail Quorum)
  • GIP-129: Establish Seldon Inc (Gnosis VPN) — PASSED (73 votes)
  • GIP-138: Fund NodeSentinel Maintenance — PASSED (95 votes)
  • GIP-136: Gnosis Explorer (v1+v2) Maintenance — REJECTED (Fail Quorum)
  • GIP-134: Pilot Gnosis Growth Fund (Gardens) — REJECTED (Fail Quorum: 98%)
  • GIP-132: Bounty for Consensus Discrepancy — REJECTED (Majority 'For' but missed 75k quorum)
  • GIP-135: Fund audit for gEURO CDP stablecoin — PASSED (105 votes)
  • GIP-133: Extend Gnosis Pay Cashback budget — PASSED (113 votes)
  • GIP-130: Restore DAO control of gnosis.eth — PASSED (61 votes)
  • GIP-128: Fund Gnosis Ltd ($30m/year) — PASSED (94 votes)
  • GIP-126: Renew Nethermind Partnership — PASSED (79 votes)
  • GIP-99: Gnosis Guild Governance Stewardship — REJECTED (122 votes)
  • GIP-122: Support development of Gnosis VPN — PASSED (131 votes)
  • GIP-121: 7.5% Stake in karpatkey DAO — PASSED (83 votes)
  • GIP-118: Replace sDAI with sUSDS in bridge — PASSED (95 votes)
  • GIP-116: Treasury Ops & 3.15M GNO Burn — PASSED (93 votes)
  • GIP-120: Acquire Headquarters (HQ.xyz) — PASSED (93 votes)
  • GIP-117: Partnership with Backed — PASSED (102 votes)

🚀 The Delegate Experiment

The trial period for the Gnosis Delegate Program provided critical data on DAO participation. As noted in GIP-137:

"After the delegations to the 10 selected delegates were made, the Gnosis DAO’s issue of failing to reach quorum on proposals became a non-issue."

Despite the stabilization of quorum, the renewal was REJECTED in November. The community signaled that any future incentive program must demonstrate a more direct correlation between compensation and measurable value.

🦉 2026: Current Discussions & New Horizons

🔍 Net Asset Value per GNO (GIP-146) — Phase 2 Discussion

A new proposal by Wismerhill is currently in the discussion phase, seeking to establish a transparent and updated Net Asset Value (NAV) per GNO. This initiative aims to bridge the gap between market perception and intrinsic value by providing quarterly reports on circulating supply and venture valuations.

📢 Request for Proposals (RFP): Treasury Management

Co-founder Friederike Ernst has published an RFP seeking a new treasury management provider. The DAO is looking for a crypto-native partner to handle strategic and operational liquidity across Gnosis Chain, DeFi, and Circles.

  • Scope: Operational liquidity, endowment management, and governance support.
  • Budget: Annual envelope of ≤ USD 1.5M.
  • Timeline: Proposal submission until Jan 23rd (possible extension to Jan 30th).

👉 Join the discussion on the Gnosis Forum.

Published by:

GnosisDAO