GIP-126: Should the GnosisDAO Renew its Long-Term Partnership With Nethermind for Gnosis Chain Maintenance?

GIP: <126>
title: Should the GnosisDAO Renew its Long-Term Partnership With Nethermind for Gnosis Chain Maintenance?
author: Marek Moraczyński, Alvin Su
type: Funding
created: 2025-06-06
duration: ongoing
funding: 750,000 DAI in the first year, starting in June 2025, with annual increases of 4%

Simple Summary

Nethermind has established a partnership with Gnosis through GIP-47. This proposal renews the long-term strategic collaboration with Nethermind for the continued maintenance and development of the Gnosis Chain. Nethermind has consistently demonstrated responsibility for the chain’s security, stability, and alignment with the Ethereum roadmap, extending far beyond the scope of a single client implementation. If approved, GnosisDAO will allocate 750,000 DAI in the first year, starting in June 2025, with annual increases of 4% to fund Nethermind’s ongoing contributions.

Motivation

Nethermind is a high-performance, .NET based Ethereum Execution Client that has played a foundational role in the development of the Gnosis Chain. Known for its reliable synchronization, efficient block processing, and robust plugin architecture, the Nethermind client consistently delivers utility and stability. Over the past few years, Nethermind has evolved from being solely a client provider to becoming a core contributor across many aspects of the Gnosis Chain infrastructure. This includes serving as the supermajority client and supporting DevOps, testing, and research. As the Gnosis Chain continues to be a critical piece of infrastructure, Nethermind remains crucial for its ongoing development and long-term success.

Past Contributions

Nethermind has played a crucial role in ensuring the reliable and stable operation of the Gnosis Chain. Nethermind has delivered on the promises from GIP-47, some of them were reprioritized and changed with other ones. Moreover, the Nethermind team has contributed to more areas than originally outlined in GIP-47. Nethermind has contributed to the following areas:

• Hardforks: The Nethermind team, in collaboration with Gnosis, has successfully navigated multiple hardforks. Nethermind has never been limited to client development alone, but has also taken full ownership of all testing related to hardforks. The team was responsible for testing and ensuring that all upgrades ran smoothly. With The Merge, Gnosis Chain was migrated from AuRa consensus to PoS, with Nethermind being the sole client that went through the transition. During Shapella, Gnosis Chain introduced withdrawals. The Dencun and Pectra hardforks on Gnosis Chain were delivered before their activation on the Ethereum mainnet. All of these hardforks were delivered with such quality that the chain, users, and node runners did not experience a single major issue.
• Client Improvements: Over the past three years, Nethermind has made significant advancements. The Nethermind client is fully ready to scale Gnosis Chain without sacrificing decentralization. This progress is visible in its adoption on the Ethereum Mainnet. Nethermind was initially used by only 1–3% of nodes on Ethereum, but now plays an important role in Ethereum client diversity, running on at least 29.3% of Ethereum validators. During these years, Nethermind team has made countless improvements across many areas such as the general performance, stability of the client, JSON-RPC, health checks, plugin architecture, state DB layout, and pruning. Gnosis Chain can also benefit from super-fast snap-sync.
• Chain Health & Client Stability: As the supermajority client on Gnosis Chain, Nethermind has played a key role in maintaining the network’s safety and stability over the years. Gnosis Chain has experienced no downtime, and all significant issues have been promptly addressed in close collaboration with the Gnosis team. Furthermore, Nethermind has actively supported efforts to onboard additional execution clients to the Gnosis Chain.
• DevOps & Infrastructure: Nethermind has initiated and managed all networks used for testing, including devnets and shadow forks. Additionally, the Nethermind team set up the Chiado network and previously maintained the majority of its validators. Currently, Nethermind maintains 30% of the Chiado validators.
• Encrypted Mempools: Nethermind delivered the first encrypted mempool implementation in its client using the Shutter protocol, bringing censorship resistance and frontrunning protection to Gnosis Chain. The team has contributed to the specification, implementation, and ongoing research efforts that help shape its roadmap.
• Testing & Tooling: The team has been working on adopting a variety of testing tools and repositories for use on Gnosis Chain. This includes tools and repositories such as Hive, t8n, EEST, consensus-specs. The goal of these efforts is to ensure that network-specific features (for example base fee collector, and withdrawals) are tested with Ethereum Mainnet-level quality. This also facilitates the onboarding of other clients. Additionally, the team has implemented monitoring for Hive tests and maintains a page displaying hive tests results.

Scope of Work & Team

Nethermind proposes to continue supporting and improving the Gnosis Chain and the broader ecosystem. The main goal of this proposal is to ensure the continued maintenance of the Gnosis Chain. The scope of work includes:

• Maintaining the Nethermind Client as a performant and reliable execution client on the Gnosis Chain.
• Delivering changes from the Ethereum roadmap in a timely manner. This includes adopting Ethereum mainnet upgrades to the Gnosis Chain when necessary. As an ongoing agreement this includes all future hardforks. In the near term, the current focus will be:
  • Fusaka – the upcoming hard fork for both Ethereum and Gnosis Chain
  • Glamsterdam – the subsequent hard fork
  • History expiry – which aims to reduce disk requirements for node operators
  • Statelessness – an ongoing effort; the direction has recently shifted from Verkle tries to binary tries, with binary tries currently being prototyped
• Continuously improve the client’s ability to handle higher throughput, optimize disk usage, and enhance synchronization performance.
• Maintain the encrypted mempool solution.
• Develop, adopt and maintain custom EIPs required by the Gnosis Chain.
• Optimize the design of the Nethermind archive node to reduce storage requirements.
• Assist with adopting Ethereum testing infrastructure for Gnosis (e.g., hive, t8n, EEST) and extend it to support Gnosis Chain–specific features.
• Support hardfork testing, including devnets, Kurtosis setups, and shadow forks.
• Continue maintaining Chiado and other critical infrastructure. The broader Nethermind core team comprises over 20 engineers contributing to both the Gnosis Chain and Ethereum Mainnet. For Gnosis Chain, Nethermind allocates a dedicated subset of engineers based on shifting priorities and workload demands. The number of team members, including engineers, testers, DevOps specialists, and support staff, varies over time and can scale up during major upgrades or critical initiatives. This dynamic approach ensures efficient resource allocation while reinforcing Nethermind’s strong commitment to the stability, seamless upgrades, and continuous development of the Gnosis Chain.

Funding Request:

This proposal seeks to renew the previous grant to enable Nethermind to continue its commitment to and maintenance of the Gnosis Chain. An ongoing grant of 750,000 DAI is requested for the first year, starting in June 2025, with a 4% increase each subsequent year. Payments to be made at the beginning of each quarter, first payment in June 2025. This funding will enable the Nethermind team to maintain its current structure and provide the necessary expertise for the Gnosis Chain. Continued investment in Nethermind’s work ensures that Gnosis Chain remains aligned with Ethereum’s technical roadmap, maintains a highly performant execution layer, and benefits from leading client and testing infrastructure. This partnership enables Gnosis to prioritize resilience, innovation, and seamless network upgrades without compromising stability or decentralization.

Conclusion

Nethermind has proven itself as a key infrastructure partner of Gnosis. This proposal aims to continue the partnership to maintain Gnosis Chain and ensure it remains robust and aligned with the Ethereum roadmap.

Proposal submitted by: Marek Moraczyński (Head of Blockchain Engineering) @marekm25, Alvin Su (Chief Commercial Officer) @alvinsu

On behalf of the Nethermind team