Safe (previously known as Gnosis Safe), a blockchain asset management platform, today announced it has raised $100 million led by 1kx. Initially developed as an internal tool, Gnosis Safe has organically become a popular infrastructure for web3 as a means to securely manage digital assets.
This funding round is a milestone for the growth of Safe as a programmable ownership platform, enabling secure management of digital assets, data, and identity across DAOs, plus retail and institutional users.
Today’s new funding and strategic alliances will enable Safe to grow an ecosystem of apps and tools on top of its smart contract account protocol. All funding is extended to the Safe Ecosystem Foundation, a non-profit organization protecting strategic assets and contributing to the further development of Safe.
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.
Unlocking ownership for everyone in web3
Gaining wide adoption for its self-custody solution, Safe has been used to process over 600,000 transactions and secure digital assets exceeding $40 billion. Additionally, many highly valued NFTs, including 13% of all Cryptopunks, are currently secured using Safe.
Safe has built infrastructure that serves some of the biggest DAO treasuries (1inch, BitDAO), crypto institutions (Bitfinex, GSR), and enterprises (Shopify, AB group). Also, individuals such as Vitalik Buterin and Punk6529 (participating as an angel) use Safe to secure their most valuable personal digital assets.
Making web3 accounts smart
Traditional web3 accounts are controlled by a single private key, emanated from a 24-word secret phrase. As long as a user owns this private key, they control the account. However, these private keys can get lost or compromised, resulting in the total loss of the assets associated with the account.
Safe, on the other hand, uses smart contracts accounts that can be individually configured to suit the custody needs of different user groups:
- Authentications using multiple private keys (multisig) or community-control (DAOs)
- Recovery and inheritance mechanisms
- Improved transaction experience (transaction batching, gas abstraction)
- Transaction checks and hybrid-custody
- Spending limits and automation
“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 a joined effort by the entire web3 community.”
– Lukas Schor, Co-Founder, Safe
An ecosystem
Safe aims to foster a vibrant ecosystem of apps and wallets leveraging Safe smart contract accounts. This will be achieved through grants, ecosystem investments, and developer tools.
“Safe is user-group and use-case agnostic infrastructure at its heart. Due to this role, we are excited to involve a diverse group of industry leaders to accelerate the adoption of smart contract accounts. Leveraging the broad expertise and network of our partners, Safe is uniquely positioned to cover various ecosystem verticals such as DAO, DeFi, NFT, P2E, and institutional offerings.”
– Christoph Simmchen, Co-Founder, Safe
Presently, the Safe ecosystem consists of many ecosystem verticals. These projects provide specialized solutions across savings (Streams, Linen Wallet), treasury management (Coinshift, Parcel), DAO tooling (Utopia Labs, Orca Protocol), wallets (Rabby, Metamask Institutional), and NFTs (Prysm, Castle).
