DAOrayaki Research|Gnosis Safe：A Flexible and Secure Digital Asset Management Tool

DAOrayaki

10 min readJun 9, 2021

DAOrayaki DAO Research Grant：

Fund Address: 0xCd7da526f5C943126fa9E6f63b7774fA89E88d71

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Grant Amount：200 USDC

Category: Gnosis Safe, Smart Contracts, Multi-Signature Wallets, Externally Owned Accounts (EOAs), Contract Accounts,

Contributor：Jones, 黑白QB, DAOctor @Daorayaki

Launch date: Gnosis Safe was launched in 2018 for both Android and iOS as mobile usage of the Gnosis Safe web version as a chrome extension.

Chinese Version:https://daorayaki.org/xiang-jie-gnosis-safe-ling-huo-an-quan-de-shu-zi-zi-chan-guan-li-gong-ju/

Brief Overview about Gnosis safe:

By requiring multiple users to approve a transaction, multisignature wallets enable groups of people to collectively control their funds. The Gnosis Multisig wallet sets a standard to secure fund managements: It holds and other ERC-20 tokens, integrates with web3 wallets, supports offline signing, hardware ledgers, and allows users to configure both owners and number of required signatures. Furthermore, Gnosis Safe offers similar functionality as the Gnosis Multisig, but is geared towards single users using two or more factor authentication. The additional factors can be held by mobile devices (phones, tablets) and hardware ledgers.

I. Background:

At the core of everything we do on Ethereum, whether it’s sending ETH to a friend, taking out a loan on Maker or buying digital art on OpenSea is the concept of an account. An account on Ethereum holds everything we own, allows us to interact with the network and gives us an identity. This account is identified with a 42 character string of numbers and letters, prefixed with 0x.

Since 2017, Ethereum has seen an explosion in unique accounts created on the network. At this point in time there are more than 90,000,000 unique accounts and that number is growing at a pace of around 70,000 per day (Source: Etherscan, April 3, 2020). At the same time, these accounts are securing more than $40,000,000,000 USD in value between ETH and ERC20 tokens (Source: CoinMarketCap and Etherscan, April 3, 2020). With the rapid pace of adoption and wealth, we should make sure that we are using accounts to the best of their ability.

II. Team, Affiliates & Partners:

1. Core team:

Martin Köppelmann, CEO

Martin Köppelmann has been an entrepreneur and thought leader in the blockchain space for more than 3 years. He co-founded the decentralized Gnosis prediction market — the first bigger dApp that went live on Ethereum. Closely related to prediction markets is his work on decentralized market driven governance mechanisms: Futarchy. Beyond the entrepreneurial activity Martin has done research on the economic incentive structure of different consensus mechanisms and scalability solutions via state channels. Martin co-hosts the Ethereum meetup groups in the Silicon Valley and San Francisco. Finally, Martin is well known for his work and research on “basic income on the blockchain: Circles” — a new currency built on top of Ethereum that aims to implement a basic income as monetary policy.

Stefan George, CTO

Stefan is an entrepreneur and developer who became interested in Bitcoin in 2013. Previously Stefan worked at tech companies in Silicon Valley and at Berlin-based startups. After finishing his Master’s in CS he decided to travel Asia for a year in 2014 and started Gnosis afterwards working from Berlin. The first alpha version of Gnosis was released just one week after the launch of Ethereum. Stefan leads the development at Gnosis and implemented the smart contracts behind the prediction market platform.

Dr. Friederike Ernst, COO

Friederike is a physicist by training and after obtaining her PhD from the Free University of Berlin and subsequently conducted fundamental research at Columbia University and Stanford for a number of years. Friederike has moonlighted as a crypto technologist for many years and now structures and directs company operations at Gnosis full time. In addition, she is also the general secretary of the German Blockchain Association, the leading German thinktank on blockchain policy.

2. Board & Advisors:

Joseph Lubin (Board member)

Co-founder of Ethereum and founder of ConsenSys. An academic background in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from Princeton University and research experience in the field of Robotics Learning. Former VP of Technology at Goldman Sachs in the Private Wealth Management Division.

Jeremy Millar (Board member)

Chief of staff at ConsenSys. As Chief of Staff, Jeremy oversees many of the enterprise activities and strategic initiatives of the firm. Previously, Jeremy Millar was founder and managing partner of Ledger Partners. Ledger Partners developed out of Jeremy’s increasing focus and passion for the blockchain and bitcoin ecosystem. This began with what was supposed to be a blog post that became arguably the most comprehensive report to date on what is happening in the world of bitcoin and blockchain startups, which you can see here: http://bit.ly/1Zq2Pvy. Jeremy began his career as one of the first Java architects at Oracle, before moving into sales management and strategy roles, both within Oracle and at a number of start-ups. He went on to complete his MBA at Oxford University before joining the M&A team at Goldman Sachs. Jeremy was a founding partner at Magister Advisors, advising fintech and SaaS companies across Europe. He is also an active angel investor and mentor with the Barclays Accelerator powered by Techstars.

James Slazas

20 years of capital markets experience, initially on the futures’ exchanges of the CME and La Matif. Managed a proprietary derivative arbitrage and structured products book for Lehman Brothers. Also, held $1B in emerging market credit risk for Lehman’s London, Swiss and Hong Kong banks for HNW clients. James managed a life settlement hedge fund uniquely acquiring longevity risk for limited partnership units.

Robin Hanson

Robin Hanson is an associate professor of economics at George Mason University and a research associate at the Future of Humanity Institute of Oxford University. He is known as an expert on idea futures and markets, and he was involved in the creation of the Foresight Institute’s Foresight Exchange and DARPA’s FutureMAP project. He invented market scoring rules like LMSR (Logarithmic Market Scoring Rule) used by prediction markets such as Gnosis, and has conducted research on signaling.

Jason Trost

Founder and CEO of Smarkets. Prior to founding Smarkets, Jason was an application developer at UBS’s Global Asset Management (New York) where he focused on innovative web technologies. Jason founded internet startup Descipher, a consumer medical website and has also been an equities trader at Great Point Capital (Chicago).

Vitalik Buterin

Founder of Ethereum, Ethereum Chief Scientist. Vitalik Buterin is a Canadian programmer and writer primarily known as a co-founder of Ethereum and as a co-founder of Bitcoin Magazine. Vitalik helped to develop Gnosis’ auction mechanism and is involved in the crypto-economic experiments conducted by Gnosis.

III. The ideas behind Gnosis Safe:

There are actually two different types of accounts on Ethereum: externally owned accounts and contract accounts, and it’s becoming clearer the latter is key to mass adoption. Below we provide a comparison of externally owned accounts and contract accounts, followed by a walkthrough of the main features and advantages of building with the Gnosis Safe smart contracts according to the gnosis team.

1. EOAs vs. contract accounts:

What is the difference between the two different types of accounts on Ethereum: externally owned accounts (EOAs) and contract accounts?

1.1. EOAs:

Till now, most accounts created on the Ethereum network fall under the category of externally owned accounts. EOAs for short are Ethereum accounts that use traditional key pairs. That is, they consist of a single private key that can be used to make transactions and sign messages. If you gain access to that private key, you gain full control of the account. Most popular wallets such as Memask or imToken are simple EOAs, and even hardware wallets such as Ledger Nano or Trezor are based on EOAs. This means that only the private key a single point of failure stands between users and their funds being lost.

1.2. Contract accounts:

The other type of Ethereum accounts are smart contract accounts. Like EOAs, smart contract accounts each have a unique public Ethereum address, and it’s impossible to tell them apart from EOAs by looking at an Ethereum address. Smart contract accounts too can receive funds and make transactions like EOAs. Generally, the key difference is that no single private key is used to verify transactions. Instead, the logic behind how the account completes transactions is defined in the smart contract code. Smart contracts are programs that run on the Ethereum blockchain and execute when specific conditions are met. Their functionality within contract accounts means that such accounts, in contrast to EOAs, can, for example, implement access rights that specify by whom, how, and under which conditions transactions can be executed, as well as more complex logic.

1.3. Multi-signature Wallets:

Multi-signature wallets are contract accounts that require multiple parties to confirm a transaction before it can be executed. These parties, each represented by a unique Ethereum account address, are defined as multi-signature wallet owners in the smart contract. Only when a predefined number of these owners confirm a transaction, will the transaction be executed. Hence, the single point of failure associated with private key-controlled accounts is removed; losing or compromising a private key will no longer automatically result in a loss of all funds controlled by the account.

2. The Gnosis Safe:

The Gnosis Safe is a smart contract wallet with multi-signature functionality at its core. It enables the following features:

2.1. High Security:

Gnosis Safe’s multi-signature functionality allows you to define a list of owner accounts and a threshold number of accounts required to confirm a transaction. Once the threshold of owner accounts has confirmed a transaction, the Safe transaction can be executed. Owners can either be EOAs or other smart contract accounts.

2.2. Advanced execution logic:

It is possible to make use of different Gnosis Safe Library contracts to perform complex transactions. A very common example of this is batched transactions where multiple simple Ethereum transaction are combined and executed at once. That means instead of having to sign several transactions sequentially, a user just needs to sign one batched transaction.

2.3. Advanced access management:

A user can add Gnosis Safe Modules to his Gnosis Safe. Thereby, it is possible to implement more fine-grained access management. For instance, it is possible to define a module that can only be used to recover access to a Gnosis Safe under specific circumstances. A popular version of this is the Social Recovery Module. A different example is allowance modules that allow owners of a Gnosis Safe to grant limited execution permission, such as a daily limit to external accounts.

2.4. Token callback support:

Many new tokens require wallet contracts to implement callbacks. Token standards like ERC721 and ERC1155 allow contracts to immediately react to receiving tokens through these and make it even possible to reject the transfer completely.

2.5. Ether-less accounts:

Another core functionality of the Gnosis Safe is token payment. Generally, Ethereum transactions require ETH for paying transaction fees (“gas”). With the Gnosis Safe, users can pay transaction fees in a number of supported ERC20 tokens. This is realized via a transaction relay service that accepts those tokens and submits the transactions to the blockchain, therefore paying the gas fee in ETH. With the same functionality, Ether-less transactions can be implemented, where a 3rd party pays transaction fees on behalf of a Gnosis Safe via the same relay service.

3. Gnosis Safe interfaces:

The Gnosis Safe smart contracts can be accessed via different interfaces:

3.1. Gnosis Safe Multisig web interface:

A Gnosis Safe can be easily setup via the Gnosis Safe official website https://gnosis-safe.io, where a user can specify the number of owners and their owner account addresses. Compatible account addresses include hardware wallets, Metamask, Authereum, WalletConnect enabled wallets, and others. You can see the asset overview and can make transactions such as custom transactions for direct smart contract interaction. In addition to that ENS names are supported also. Currently the team is working on a better dApp integration via Safe Apps which third party developers can leverage.

3.2. Gnosis Safe Multisig Mobile:

While the web interface remains the focal point, there are also Gnosis Safe Mobile apps. Gnosis Safe Multisig Mobile allows you to track your assets and transactions on your phone and to stay informed on-the-go via push notifications.

App stores

- iOS：https://apps.apple.com/app/id1515759131

- Android：https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=io.gnosis.safe

Beta

- Mainnet iOS：https://testflight.apple.com/join/c6k0CIUk

- Mainnet Android：https://appdistribution.firebase.dev/i/401cf2ea8afd6ed8

- Rinkeby iOS：https://testflight.apple.com/join/U8NviSFl

- Rinkeby Android：https://appdistribution.firebase.dev/i/8ecc0367c2001086

3.3. Gnosis Safe command line interface (CLI):

A user can use the safe-cli to interact with your Safe using the command line. Its functionality is currently limited.

3.3.1. Focus on open source:

Gnosis Safe code is an open-source code available under Github, which includes the smart contracts, all interfaces, and the backend services. For Gnosis Safe team trust and security are essential aspects between users and them, especially for wallet infrastructure.

3.4. External interfaces:

Universal Login enables full support for Gnosis Safe smart contracts. A newly deployed wallet is by default a Gnosis Safe. They leverage the Safe mainly due to its security: “Gnosis Safe is formally verified and audited code that is storing more and more value every month (currently almost $9 million worth)”

Pepo, a video-sharing social network built on blockchain and developed by OST, utilized the Gnosis Safe smart contracts. For each new Pepo user, a new Gnosis Safe contract is deployed. The Pepo team decided to build on the Gnosis Safe stack because of its modularity, flexibility, and security, allowing their dapp to take advantage of session keys, multiple device management, and account recovery. A key contribution from Gnosis Safe to the dapp’s user experience is that its contracts enable users to have multiple devices.

IV. Contact Information:

Official Website: https://gnosis-safe.io

Twitter: https://twitter.com/gnosisSafe

Discord: https://discord.gg/hck6QZxu

Medium: https://blog.gnosis.pm/tagged/safe

Github: https://github.com/gnosis?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=safe

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