Gnosis (GNO)

What Gnosis is

GNO is the staking and governance token of Gnosis Chain, an EVM network whose transaction fees are paid in a different asset entirely. Gnosis Chain's documentation states that GNO "is the key token of the Gnosis ecosystem. It's used for staking on the Gnosis Beacon Chain and acts as the governance token for the GnosisDAO" (source: Gnosis Chain documentation, GNO token page, read September 2026).

The split between the two tokens is the thing to understand first. Gas on Gnosis Chain is paid in xDAI, which the documentation identifies as the network's native fee currency. GNO is what a validator stakes to secure the chain, and what a holder votes with. A user transacting on Gnosis Chain may never touch GNO at all.

GNO is an erc 20 with 18 decimals, deployed at 0x6810e776880c02933d47db1b9fc05908e5386b96 on ethereum and at 0x9C58BAcC331c9aa871AFD802DB6379a98e80CEdb on Gnosis Chain, per the documentation's specifications table.

For where to buy Gnosis from your country or state, see the availability tables on this page and the venues listed at Exchanges.

How it works

Gnosis Chain is built as an execution layer paired with the Gnosis Beacon Chain as its consensus layer, mirroring Ethereum's post-merge structure but with its own parameters. The documentation's mainnet specification gives chain ID 100, a slot time of 5 seconds, an epoch of 16 slots, which works out to 80 seconds, and a stated finalization time of 2.7 minutes.

The short epoch is the design decision that follows from the short slot. Ethereum's 32-slot epochs at 12 seconds each run 6.4 minutes; Gnosis Chain's 16 slots at 5 seconds run 80 seconds, so finality arrives in minutes rather than tens of minutes. That is a deliberate tradeoff toward faster settlement on a chain aimed at payments and everyday transactions.

Staking is where GNO enters. The documentation's validator deposit page is explicit about the amount: "You will need to make a deposit of 1 GNO for each validator." That is a much lower bar than Ethereum's 32 ETH, which is the point. The same page notes that "You can make a bulk deposit for up to 128 validators at a time," and that after depositing a validator waits "1024 Gnosis Chain blocks plus up to 64 Gnosis Beacon Chain epochs," which the documentation puts at "roughly 1 hour and 25 minutes before the validators start proposing and attesting blocks."

There is a historical wrinkle worth knowing because it still appears in old guides. The documentation records that deposits were once made in a token called mGNO, "with a conversion rate of 1 GNO = 32 mGNO," specifically "to mimic Ethereum's 32 ETH staking requirement." The documentation states that mGNO "is now deprecated and no longer serves any purpose." If a tutorial tells you to wrap GNO into mGNO before depositing, it is out of date.

Assets move between Ethereum and Gnosis Chain over the OmniBridge, which the documentation names as the Ethereum-to-Gnosis token bridge. As with any canonical bridge, the bridged representation of an asset is only as good as the bridge contract holding the original.

Supply and tokenomics

GNO's supply is not published on the pages read for this deep-dive. The documentation's GNO token page gives contract addresses, decimals, ticker and use cases, and points at market data sites for the rest. Take the supply figure from the data on this page rather than from a secondary source.

GNO's second job is governance. The documentation names GNO as "the governance token for the GnosisDAO" and points holders at the GnosisDAO Governance Forum. The GNO token contract itself has been audited: the documentation links a "GNO Token v2.0.0 Audit by Verilog Solutions."

For holders who do not want to run infrastructure, the documentation notes that liquid staking providers issue sGNO and rGNO against staked GNO. Those are third-party products with their own risk, not protocol-native tokens.

History

Gnosis Chain's most consequential change was moving from an authority-based validator set to proof of stake on the Gnosis Beacon Chain, which is why the documentation carries separate specification pages for Aura, POSDAO and proof-of-stake. That transition is what made GNO a staking asset rather than only a governance one, and it is why the 1 GNO deposit exists as a parameter at all.

The mGNO episode is a small but instructive piece of that history. To reuse Ethereum's consensus client software without modification, deposits had to look like 32 units of something, so GNO was wrapped at a 32-to-1 ratio into mGNO. Once the clients could handle a different deposit size directly, the wrapper became unnecessary and was retired.

The chain has otherwise tracked Ethereum's upgrade path closely. The documentation's hard-fork index lists its own implementations of EIP-1559, the merge, Shanghai and Capella, Dencun and Pectra, each landing on Gnosis Chain after the equivalent Ethereum fork.

Risks and what to watch

Validator distribution matters more here than on chains with a high deposit minimum, and in both directions. A 1 GNO deposit lowers the barrier to running a validator, which is good for the number of independent operators, but the same low bar makes it cheap for one operator to run very many validators. Watch how stake is distributed across operators rather than how many validators exist.

The two-token structure creates a dependency worth naming: the security budget is denominated in GNO while network usage is denominated in xDAI. Those two can move independently, and the relationship between the value of what secures the chain and the value of what flows across it is not fixed by the protocol.

Bridge risk applies to anything that arrived over the OmniBridge. A bridged asset on Gnosis Chain is a claim on a contract holding the original on Ethereum, and that claim is only as sound as the contract and its operators.

Governance is a live parameter set rather than a settled one. GnosisDAO decides protocol changes, and concentrated voting power is worth tracking directly.

Frequently asked questions

Do I need GNO to pay gas on Gnosis Chain?

No. Gnosis Chain's documentation names xDAI as the network's gas currency. GNO is used for staking on the Gnosis Beacon Chain and for GnosisDAO governance.

How much GNO does a validator need?

One. The documentation states, "You will need to make a deposit of 1 GNO for each validator," and allows bulk deposits covering up to 128 validators in a single transaction.

What was mGNO?

A wrapper used historically for beacon chain deposits at a rate of 1 GNO to 32 mGNO, chosen to mimic Ethereum's 32 ETH requirement. The documentation states it is deprecated and no longer serves any purpose.

How fast does Gnosis Chain finalize?

The mainnet specification gives 5-second slots, 16 slots per epoch for an 80-second epoch, and a stated finalization time of 2.7 minutes.

Where can you buy Gnosis?

Availability depends on your country or US state. See where to buy Gnosis for the exchanges serving your jurisdiction, and Exchanges to compare fees, kyc requirements and supported payment methods.