Gnosis DAO is currently deliberating on a proposal for a substantial buyback of its native token, GNO, which has already sparked a significant surge in its price.

Thanefield Capital, a crypto fund with a vested interest in the GNO token, has put forward a proposal calling for the deployment of $30 million from the DAO's treasury over a six-month period. The aim is to realign the market value of GNO with its intrinsic book value.

According to Thanefield Capital, the current market capitalization of GNO, based on its circulating supply, is undervalued compared to the DAO's assets. Gnosis DAO reportedly holds $630 million in non-GNO liquid assets and $100 million in venture capital investments, totaling $730 million. Contrastingly, the circulating supply of Gnosis tokens is 1.53 million GNO, valued at about $424 million. However, Thanefield Capital contends that 1 million tokens are owned by Gnosis DAO and should be counted outside of the circulating supply.

Preliminary support for the proposal has been evident, with 12 out of 14 voters on the governance forum favoring it thus far. Gnosis co-founder Martin Köppelmann endorsed the proposal, suggesting that the token buyback should be linked to a "growth program" aimed at attracting more users.

Should Thanefield's proposal receive approval, the execution strategy for the buyback program will involve two approaches. The first approach, the TWAP strategy, will allocate $15 million to purchase GNO tokens using a time-weighted average price technique over six months, resulting in an estimated $83,333 daily buy pressure for GNO. The second approach allocates the remaining $15 million but allows for optimization of purchases based on market conditions. The buyback program will be managed by karpatkey, an on-chain asset management project.

Gnosis DAO oversees the Gnosis Chain, a sidechain parallel to Ethereum, and the CoW Protocol, a decentralized exchange. Notably, Safe, the most widely used multisig provider on Ethereum, spun off from Gnosis into its own DAO.

Since the proposal surfaced, the price of Gnosis has surged by as much as 20%, reaching a peak of $320, according to The Block's price page. Presently, the token is trading around $308, indicating significant investor interest in the proposed buyback initiative.