Gnosis forks out $3m a year to keep its blockchain running
The “quasi-foundation” has asked for $30 million per year from the DAO. Of that headline number, $3.6 million would go toward “Gnosis Chain and Core Infrastructure," according to the reques
Running an Ethereum-compatible blockchain isn’t cheap. Take it from Gnosis, the crypto company that just made its first-ever request for annual funding from the Gnosis DAO cooperative.
The “quasi-foundation” has asked for $30 million per year from the DAO. Of that headline number, $3.6 million would go toward “Gnosis Chain and Core Infrastructure," according to the request.
Here’s the breakdown: almost $2 million would go toward personnel, a category that covers the blockchain’s ongoing software development.
More than $600,000 is needed for “hosting and cloud providers,” a category that, according to the company’s head of infrastructure, includes the chain’s “bootnodes, validators, testing, indexing, analytics, archival,” and hosting for other Gnosis-branded products.
Audits cost $300,000. And Gnosis’ partnership with Etherscan, the block explorer, costs $400,000 — a steal, according to former Scroll engineer Toghrul Maharramov.
In short, keeping a blockchain online is a cash-intensive endeavour.
The funding request is part of Gnosis’ bigger push into consumer-facing software development, according to co-founder Friederike Ernst.
“The story we want to tell is no longer just about open infrastructure, but about building fair, user-owned financial systems,” she wrote to DAO members.
Like Morpho, Gnosis moved this year to address perceived tension between equity investors and token holders, “converting the entity into a purely purpose-driven organisation,” according to Ernst.
Gnosis already has 127 employees and plans to hire 25 more this year, according to the proposal.
