Gnosis, a decentralized prediction market solution that spun out from Ethereum (ETH) development studio ConsenSys back in 2017, has launched a separate decentralized prediction market specifically for the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.
Gnosis confirmed that it has provided $50,000 to help fund a non-profit Corona Information Markets, which will allow people to bet on future events related to the Coronavirus.
At present, open markets listed on Gnosis include:
- “How many confirmed cases of COVID-19 will there be in the State of New York on June 1st , 2020?”
- “What percentage of the global population will be estimated to have contracted COVID-19 by the end of 2020?”
Marc Ziade, business operations and strategy head at Gnosis, noted:
“We are hoping that the Corona Information Markets platform will allow for the uncovering of truth regarding vital questions and enable rapid spread of useful information, making it accessible to everyone.”
Coronavirus-related events are represented or associated with their own decentralized market. Users are able to place bets on the future outcome of these events using Circle and Coinbase’s stablecoin USDC. Market participants may also sell these bets before the markets shut down.
The results of each open market are determined by Gnosis’ decentralized Oracle, which gathers information from “trusted” data sources, including the World Health Organization (WHO).
Ziade stated:
“It is in such times that we, at Gnosis, hope that prediction markets can help us by providing some signal out of the noise around us.”
Notably, Gnosis has geo-blocked all US territories because of regulatory issues (which is ironic because the main value proposition of “decentralized” platforms is that they’re uncensorable and permissionless).
There are several other distributed ledger technology (DLT)-based platforms that have been developed, including Augur (REP), which is currently preparing to launch its second version at some point this year.
