Martin Köppelmann

According to Gnosis co-founder Stefan George, he and Martin Köppelmann started a company based on Bitcoin in 2013 that built a prediction market for Bitcoin; in 2015 the two concluded that Ethereum was better suited to fully decentralized prediction markets and, after meeting Joe Lubin of Consensys, developed the project as part of Consensys, which became Gnosis.⁠[1][1][1][1]

Gnosis spun off from Consensys and held a token sale in 2017. Köppelmann said in 2018 that more than 50 people were working on Gnosis and that the team would not need to touch its reserve of about 200,000 ETH for the next five to seven years.⁠[1][2]

In September 2020, the GNO-holding hedge fund Arca criticized Gnosis for failing to deliver the products in its white paper and for launching products that benefited only equity holders, and called on Gnosis to buy back outstanding GNO at book value. Köppelmann responded that Gnosis was already preparing a more appealing plan, a Gnosis DAO giving GNO holders much more ownership, to be presented soon; Arca welcomed this but asked for a specific date and details. In November that year, Gnosis announced the formation of GnosisDAO.⁠[3][3][3][3][3][3][2]

In June 2021, Köppelmann appeared on the Zero Knowledge podcast as CEO of Gnosis, describing its shift from prediction markets to key infrastructure and the launch of the CowSwap exchange and tools for DAO treasury management and governance. After Gnosis Chain completed its “Merge” to proof of stake in 2022, he remarked that the merge “was almost as boring as Ethereum’s — the best possible outcome!”⁠[4][4][4][2]

After the Bybit theft in February 2025, Binance founder Changpeng Zhao (CZ) criticized Safe’s incident update on X as vague. Köppelmann replied the same day that there was no bug in the interface code; the attackers reached the server through a compromised developer machine and modified the interface specifically to target Bybit’s Safe, so that it displayed a different transaction from the one sent to the hardware wallet; on how the signers were fooled, he said he “would need to speculate.” He said the team would make it easier to verify Safe transactions on hardware devices and would push ahead with Safenet, with a professional service co-signing transactions, and with interface diversity.⁠[5][6][6][6][6][6][6]

On March 3, 2025, the Safe Ecosystem Foundation, Core Contributors GmbH and Gnosis Ltd. signed a memorandum of understanding to jointly manage the aftermath of the Bybit attack; the foundation then announced the appointment of Martin Köppelmann, co-founder and CEO of Gnosis Ltd., as an adviser to help with strategic matters arising from the attack.⁠[7][7][7]

On June 1, 2026, Gnosis Pay’s delay module was attacked. Köppelmann first acknowledged the active attack on X and urged users to withdraw their funds, a warning quickly amplified by the blockchain security firm PeckShield; he then withdrew the advice and deleted the post, saying most users would in fact not be able to withdraw, and said the team was working to contain the damage and would make users whole. A Gnosis spokesperson later confirmed that all affected users would be reimbursed in full.⁠[8][8][8][8][8]

In October 2026, Safe investor Greenfield CapitalGreenfield CapitalGreenfield Capital (formerly Greenfield One) is a crypto investment firm headquartered in Hamburg, Germany, founded in 2018 by Sebastian Blum and Jascha Samadi; its early investments include Celo, NEAR and 1inch. It has invested in Safe since 2022, and in October 2026 it filed a supervisory complaint with the Swiss Federal Supervisory Authority for Foundations over the governance of the Safe Ecosystem Foundation.Open the full entry, in filing a complaint with the Swiss supervisory authority over the Safe foundation’s governance, stated in an open letter that shortly after the Bybit theft in February 2025, Stefan George and Martin Köppelmann demanded that Safe’s other board members and co-founders give up a significant portion of their SAFE, under the threat that Gnosis would sell its entire SAFE position of about 10% of supply and publicly distance itself from the project, and that the redistribution took place after the others gave in; Greenfield also said Gnosis exerted material influence over how the foundation handled the Bybit incident. The letter says these accounts were reported and confirmed by different sources but does not identify them. As of October 14, 2026, no public response from Köppelmann had been seen.⁠[9][9][9][9][9]

Gnosis: Official website: https://www.gnosis.io/ (opens in a new window).⁠[10]

Circles: Official website: https://aboutcircles.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[10][11]

X: Public account: https://x.com/koeppelmann (opens in a new window)⁠[11]