Invest2 publishers3 min readPublished
Safe backer Greenfield asks Swiss watchdog to examine a foundation board that at times had two members
Greenfield Capital asked Switzerland's foundation watchdog to examine Safe's Zug foundation, whose board it says has at times had only two members. The early backer wants Stefan George replaced and independent directors added after months of talks failed.
The Investor · Invest desk
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What happened
- Board member Stefan George is also chief technology officer of Gnosis, the company Safe spun off from in 2022, and Gnosis sells wallet products that compete with Safe.
- After the February 2025 Bybit hack, claims surfaced that George and a Gnosis co-founder pressed Safe's founders to reallocate SAFE tokens under threat of selling Gnosis's roughly 10% stake; no authority has tested them.
- In February, Safe reported more than $10 million of annualized revenue for the end of 2025 and set 2026 targets of break-even and doubled revenue.
- Greenfield says Safe's share of USDC in circulation fell from 12.8% to 2.5%, and stablecoins in Safes on Ethereum grew 11% while total supply grew about 135%.
- Greenfield invested in Safe's 2022 financing round, says it has never sold a SAFE token, and says it will not sue individuals or try to take control.
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Why it matters
- contradiction Anyone citing Safe's decline in dollars has to choose between two published versions a factor of ten apart, though the roughly 55% fall holds under either one.
- constraint Having ruled out selling its tokens, suing anyone or taking control, Greenfield has left itself the supervisor and public argument as its only stated means of changing the board.
- decision A strategy committee without decision power did not satisfy Greenfield, so the directors now choose between recruiting outsiders themselves and defending the current board to a supervisor.
- exposure Gnosis's link to Safe, through its CTO's board seat and its competing wallets, is now part of a dispute before a federal supervisor that neither company controls.
Greenfield's revenue case starts from one quarter. By its count, second-quarter revenue was $1.98 million [14], and four quarters at that pace come to $7.9 million [1]. That is at least a fifth below the annualized figure Safe itself reported for the end of 2025 [2]. It is also $12 million short of the $20 million Greenfield says 2026 was meant to deliver, so the run rate covers 40% of the expectation [3].
The asset numbers are less tidy. Crypto Briefing reports that assets held in Safe fell from about $6.6 billion in early 2024 to around $3 billion [9]. Cointelegraph quotes Samadi putting the January 2024 to August 2026 move at $66 billion to $30 billion [10]. The two versions are a factor of ten apart. Under either one the fall is about 55% [4], over a period in which DeFi total value locked rose 40% [10]. In the open letter, Samadi wrote: "In the category that has grown the most and that self-custody infrastructure is best placed to serve, Safe has been losing ground for two and a half years." [12]
Greenfield says it spent months working with the foundation directly before filing [3]. Beyond board seats, it wanted a full review of strategy, product, organization and tokenomics, tied to measurable KPIs [19]. The foundation set up a strategy committee with no decision-making power and filled board seats that were already vacant [4]. Samadi then published an open letter to the Safe community on Sunday [18]. "But we have come to believe, after more than a year of research, dialogue and patience, that Safe will not reach its potential under its current governance," Samadi said [15]. The complaint asks the ESA to examine the foundation's governance and decide whether corrective measures are needed [20]. Neither report describes a SafeDAO vote on who sits on the board of the Zug foundation that oversees the DAO's treasury [2], or says whether SAFE holders have one.
I think the complaint's strongest count is the statutory one, or rather the narrow piece of it about board size [5]. A count of directors is something a supervisor can check against the foundation's rules. The counter-case is that the foundation has since filled its vacancies [4], so the board-size count may describe a problem already fixed. The conflict claims turn on judgment and are harder for a supervisor to rule on: they concern George's Gnosis role and Richard Meissner's ties to companies that develop and operate Safe products [7]. If the ESA [1] accepts a filled board as enough, then the view that a supervisory complaint gives a token investor real leverage over a Zug foundation is wrong.
What to watch
- A SafeDAO governance proposal on the foundation board would show whether SAFE holders have a route to the directors other than a complaint.
- Any public answer from Stefan George or Gnosis to the conflict and token-reallocation claims.
- Safe's third-quarter revenue: a quarter near $5 million would put the $20 million goal back in reach and weaken Greenfield's main performance argument.