Was Gnosis Pay cashback worth not staking the GNO?

Abstract. Gnosis Pay pays GNO cashback to card spenders who keep GNO in a Pay Safe. That GNO cannot be staked at the same time. This note compares the cashback each Safe received with the osGNO yield that same balance would have earned. The staking figure is a benchmark, not a position anyone held.

The rule

To earn cashback, a Pay Safe has to hold GNO. The same coins cannot sit in osGNO and in the Safe. Cashback is what the card paid for keeping the GNO there. Theoretical earnings are the extra GNO that balance would have grown by in osGNO, from 23 July 2024 (when osGNO started paying holders) or from when the GNO arrived, through the latest indexed transfer. Every GNO unit in the Safe counts, including cashback that stayed there.

A wallet is in this set only if it received at least one cashback payment and also spent EUR, GBP, or USD at the card aggregator. Old and new Safes stay separate. The snapshot is 30 September 2026.

The result

Cashback was larger. Across 10,878 Safes, the card paid 23,639.6 GNO. Staking those balances would have earned 3,957.7 GNO. The difference is 19,681.9 GNO in favour of cashback.

Wallets10,878
Cashback23,639.6 GNO
Share ahead87.8%

Who came out ahead

9,551 Safes received at least as much cashback as the staking benchmark. 1,327 would have earned more by staking the GNO they held. A tie counts as ahead.

Wallets whose cashback exceeded theoretical osGNO earnings, and wallets where it did not.

By GNO held

The Safes that held the most GNO gave up the most staking yield, so they needed more cashback to come out ahead. The five buckets are the highest balance each Safe reached. Exact 0.1, 1, and 10 sit in the lower bucket. Exactly 100 sits in the top bucket.

Cashback and theoretical osGNO earnings by the highest GNO balance each Safe held.

What this does not say

One Safe is not one person. The balance includes GNO that was not the qualifying deposit, including cashback that stayed in the Safe. The snapshot is 30 September 2026. The Gnosis DAO treasury (0x458cd345b4c05e8df39d0a07220feb4ec19f5e6f) and the other non-spending Safe (0x10e4597ff93cbee194f4879f8f1d54a370db6969) are excluded.

The same figures, plus how the difference is spread, are on the stats page. Every Safe is on the leaderboard.