Open Finance startup opens decentralized prediction markets for COVID-19
Gnosis, an Open Finance startup that spun out from ConsenSys in 2017, has built a decentralized prediction market platform for COVID-19.
The company announced today that it has provided $50,000 to kickstart the non-profit Corona Information Markets, where users can place bets on various COVID-19 related events.
Currently, open markets listed on the platform include "what percentage of the global population will be estimated to have contracted COVID-19 by the end of 2020," or "How many confirmed cases of COVID-19 will there be in the State of New York on June 1st , 2020?"
"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," Gnosis business operations and strategy head Marc Ziade stated in a blog post.
Each COVID-19 related event is represented by a market, and users can bet on these events with stablecoin USDC. They can also sell these bets before the markets are closed. The final result of each market will be determined by the platform's oracle, which pulls information from trusted sources such as the World Health Organization.
"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," said Ziade.
The prediction market platform geo-blocks all U.S. territories due to compliance concerns.
