Greenfield Capital Files Regulatory Complaint in Switzerland Over Governance Dispute of Cryptocurrency Wallet Safe

Coin Circle (120bTc.coM): Once regarded as a benchmark for crypto multi-signature wallets, Safe (formerly Gnosis Safe) is now facing severe growth bottlenecks. Jascha Samadi, co-founder of investment firm Greenfield Capital, published an open letter on Sunday Beijing time, pointing out that the project's commercialization progress has stagnated. Data shows that Safe's actual revenue in the second quarter of this year was only $1.98 million, equivalent to an annualized income of about $8 million, which is a significant gap from the project's target revenue of $20 million by 2026.

Not only is the financial data under pressure, but its core territory is also being eroded. According to statistics from Dune Analytics, the total asset management scale of the Safe wallet has plummeted from $66 billion in January 2024 to $30 billion in August 2026, a reduction of over half; meanwhile, the overall locked value in decentralized finance (DeFi) has expanded by 40% during the same period. In the stablecoin sector, the global supply increased by 135% within this timeframe, but Safe's Ethereum mainnet wallet stablecoin reserves only slightly increased by 11%, and its share of the total USDC circulation dropped sharply from 12.8% to 2.5%, with market territory being heavily divided by peers and other on-chain tools.

Board Deeply Involved in Conflicts of Interest

The dismal performance has prompted investors to target the top-level design of the Safe Ecosystem Foundation. Greenfield harshly accused the existing board in the letter of lacking independent directors with financial risk control and business strategy backgrounds, directly naming two core members who have serious conflicts of interest.

Specifically, board member Stefan George holds key positions in Gnosis Chain-related nodes, while Richard Meissner has close ties with the developers and operators of Safe's underlying products. Investors believe that this governance model, where one acts as both referee and player, leads to decision-makers easily leaning towards specific related parties rather than considering the overall interests of the Safe ecosystem. After months of unsuccessful internal negotiations, Greenfield formally filed a complaint with the Swiss Federal Foundation Supervisory Authority (ESA), requesting the regulatory body to intervene based on the Swiss Civil Code to remove interested parties and introduce independent governance experts from outside.

Traditional Regulatory Intervention in Decentralized Governance

This governance crisis sharply contrasts with the financial vision previously outlined by Safe. The project had boldly claimed in February this year that its annual recurring revenue would exceed $10 million by the end of 2025, with a grand business goal of reaching $100 million by 2030. In the increasingly fierce competition for crypto infrastructure, the stark reality not only exposes the project’s shortcomings in execution but also reflects the systemic risks of resource misallocation.

From the perspective of regulatory games, although the ESA has traditionally been cautious about internal disputes within crypto-native organizations, it does indeed have the legal authority to remove non-compliant directors and even forcibly dissolve the foundation. In the short term, this complaint may not immediately disrupt Safe's daily operations, but the industry signal it sends is extremely strong: when the governance structure of decentralized entities becomes long-term ineffective and lacks internal checks and balances, institutional investors are no longer limited to community posts denouncing the situation but are decisively resorting to traditional legal and regulatory measures to protect their rights.

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