Safe formerly known as Gnosis Safe, is a project that originated as a multi-signature wallet within the Gnosis ecosystem. It is a comprehensive smart contract platform for securing digital assets on Ethereum. ^[1][2][3]

Overview

Founded in 2018 by Lukas Schor and Richard Meissner, Safe is a leading developer of smart accounts on Ethereum, establishing itself as a significant infrastructure with over 8 million smart accounts deployed. It has become a widely used smart contract on Ethereum, holding over $100 billion in assets and being deployed on more than 100 EVM networks. ^[2][3]

Safe's journey includes the development of innovative features, such as modular smart accounts and tools for decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs). ^[1]

Safe {Pass}

Safe{Pass} incentivizes user engagement within the Safe Ecosystem by rewarding both new and existing users for their participation and contributions. Users earn points through various interactions with their Safe Smart Accounts, such as weekly activity and transaction volume. ^[13]

The first season runs until September 30, 2024, and aims to benefit the entire ecosystem. Participants can earn rewards through any wallet built on Safe, with additional benefits available when joining through selected ecosystem partners. ^[13]

Safe {Con}

Safe {Con} is a conference that connects with Ownership Infra providers, dApp developers, investors, and users building on smart accounts. The 2024 event took place on May 23, 2024 in Berlin. Speakers included Safe co-founder Lukas Schor, Pedro Gomes, Illia Polosukhin, Maike Hornung, etc. ^[12]

Partnerships

Safe x Pimlico

In July 2024, Safe and Pimlico launch the Safe{Core} Multi-Chain Gas Station program with Polygon PoS and Gnosis Chain to sponsor gas fees for EVM users. The initiative offers developers $250k in gas fee credits, aiming to simplify the usability of Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) smart accounts. ^[17]

Lukas Schor, Co-founder at Safe, said, 

“The launch of the Safe{Core} Gas Station marks a significant milestone in our mission to make ownership accessible to everyone. Users don’t pay the AWS bills of web2 apps and shouldn’t have to do the same on web3. By incentivizing  developers, with blockchains like Polygon and Gnosis Chain as leaders in account abstraction, we aim to move the needle on EVM user experience significantly.” ^[17]

Safe x Chainlink

In April 2024, Safe formed a strategic alliance with Chainlink Labs, the primary contributing developer of the industry-standard decentralized computing platform, Chainlink. The alliance aims to grow the adoption of account abstraction and support the security of onchain ecosystems by helping to increase the adoption of Safe infrastructure with industry-standard Chainlink services. ^[14]

Safe x Base

In February 2024, Safe partnered with Base, the Ethereum Layer 2 (L2) network incubated by Coinbase, to offer modular tooling for developers building with smart accounts and to support developers with free gas credits. ^[15]

This initiative aims to empower more builders to tap into the benefits of smart accounts and make decentralized applications (dApps) accessible, secure, and efficient for users worldwide. The collaboration comes with the wider aim of pushing smart accounts as the default standard of ownership on Ethereum. ^[15]

Safe x Web3Auth

In December 2023, Safe partnered with Web3Auth, a Wallet-as-a-Service (WaaS) provider, to take account abstraction to the next level through SafeAuth. SafeAuth is a Multi-Party Computation (MPC)-based product developed by Safe and Web3Auth. Compatible with Safe{Wallet} and several other Safe ecosystem apps and interfaces, SafeAuth will allow developers to build truly portable Smart Account use cases. ^[16]

"By integrating Web3Auth's innovative social login technology with Safe's pioneering account abstraction, we're elevating the crypto experience, significantly enhancing user convenience. This partnership marks an important step in our journey towards an accessible, interoperable and portable blockchain ecosystem ready to serve millions of users worldwide.” – Tobias Schubotz, Co-founder and Product Lead at Safe^[16]

History

Safe began as the Gnosis Multi-signature Wallet in 2017, designed for secure asset custody. It evolved into Gnosis Safe in 2018, introducing a modular architecture and enhanced security features. After becoming critical infrastructure for DAOs and other user groups, the project spun off in July 2022, rebranding as Safe. ^[4]

“SafeDAO’s mission is to establish [smart accounts] as the default means for interacting with web3. Through open source components and ecosystem initiatives we are nurturing the Safe Ecosystem, consisting of wallets, infrastructure, tooling and services.” - (SafeDAO Constitution)^[4]

In July 2022, Safe raised $100 Million led by 1kx. The round is also joined by Tiger Global, A&T Capital, Blockchain Capital, Digital Currency Group, Greenfield One, Rockaway Blockchain Fund, ParaFi, Lightspeed, Polymorphic Capital, Superscrypt, and 50 other strategic partners and industry experts. ^[7]

"For mainstream adoption of web3 we need to overcome the risks and limitations of private key accounts. Safe provides a critical public good as a composable and use-case agnostic smart contract account that can control digital assets, data, and identities. The transition towards smart contract accounts will be joined effort by the entire web3 community." - Lukas Schor. ^[7]

In 2023, Safe launched Safe{Core}, the developer suite focused on fostering an ecosystem of wallets and applications leveraging Safe Smart Accounts. In the same year, Safe also reached new high scores like 1M Safe Smart Accounts created across various use cases from AI to social, gaming, and identity. ^[4]

Safe{Core}

Safe{Core} is an open-source and modular account abstraction stack for integrating the Safe Smart Account into any digital platform, ensuring a tested core with flexible and secure capabilities for innovative applications. ^[5]

The Safe{Core} stack is categorized into three distinct groups:

Safe{Core} SDK

The Safe{Core} SDK aims to bring Account Abstraction to life by integrating Safe with different third parties. This SDK helps developers to abstract the complexity of setting up a smart contract account. ^[5]

Safe Transaction Service API

The Safe Transaction Service offers a REST API to track transactions sent via the Safe Smart Account. It also provides endpoints to send transactions, allow off-chain collecting of signatures, or informing the owners about a pending transaction to be sent to the blockchain. ^[6]

Safe Smart Account

The vision for Safe Smart Accounts is to become the standard core used in all smart contract-based wallets. It also aims to make the benefits of Account Abstraction accessible to users and developers. ^[6]

SAFE Token

$SAFE is the native ERC-20 governance token that stewards infrastructure components of the Safe ecosystem, including Safe Contracts, Default Interfaces, On-chain assets, and Tokenomics. ^[8][10]

The SAFE Token acts as a key to participate in web3’s transition to smart accounts. Token holders are part of a diverse and evolving ecosystem and govern the future of Safe. ^[8][9][10]

The SAFE token has a fixed total supply of 1,000,000,000 (1 billion) tokens. 60% of the supply was allocated to community treasuries, 15% each to core contributors and Safe Foundation, 5% each to the ecosystem and users. ^[11]