Greenfield Capital Escalates Governance Dispute With Safe, Files Supervisory Complaint in Switzerland

Cryptocurrency investor Greenfield Capital has escalated its ongoing feud with the infrastructure behind one of the digital asset sector’s most prominent self-custody protocols. The venture capital firm has officially filed a formal supervisory complaint with Switzerland’s federal foundation watchdog, seeking a thorough intervention and significant restructuring of the Safe Ecosystem Foundation’s board. The move comes after more than a year of private engagement, research, and mounting frustration over what Greenfield describes as persistent governance shortcomings and lagging market performance.

In an open letter published to the Safe community on Sunday, Greenfield founding partner Jascha Samadi outlined the motivations behind taking the dispute to the Federal Supervisory Authority for Foundations (ESA). According to Samadi, the decision was driven by an escalating series of concerns regarding the state of Safe that began accumulating in early 2025. While the broader cryptocurrency market experienced phases of expansion and renewed adoption over the same period, Greenfield argues that Safe has steadily lost ground, stagnated in key performance metrics, and failed to capitalize on the explosive growth of decentralized finance (DeFi) and digital assets.

Samadi explained that after more than a year of dedicating internal research resources, maintaining an open dialogue with stakeholders, and exercising considerable patience, his firm ultimately arrived at the conclusion that the project simply cannot reach its full potential under its current governance structure.

In response to inquiries regarding the legal and administrative action, Samuel Akpan, a spokesperson for the Safe Ecosystem Foundation, stated that the foundation has not yet received any formal inquiry from the Swiss regulatory watchdog. Consequently, the foundation declined to comment on the specific details or legal merits of the potential complaint.

The emergence of this governance dispute coincides with a critical strategic juncture for the Safe project, which has publicly staked out ambitious financial targets for the coming years. Safe is currently targeting operational break-even and a doubling of its revenue throughout 2026. In a corporate announcement published in February, the project reported that it had achieved more than $10 million in project-wide annualized revenue by the close of 2025. Furthermore, the organization outlined a much longer-term strategic ambition to scale its operations to $100 million in annual recurring revenue by the year 2030.

Greenfield Questions Safe’s Revenue Growth and Market Share

Despite the optimistic long-term projections shared by project leadership, Greenfield Capital’s assessment of Safe’s current financial trajectory paints a sharply contrasting picture. The investor pointed to second-quarter revenue figures of $1.98 million as a key indicator of underlying weakness. That revenue figure translates to an annualized run rate of approximately $8 million, a performance metric that falls severely short of the projected $20 million expectation that Safe has set for itself for 2026.

Greenfield’s critique extends far beyond top-line revenue figures, delving into broader ecosystem data that the firm believes demonstrates a systemic loss of market share. Samadi highlighted a stark divergence between Safe’s metrics and the growth rates of the wider crypto economy. Specifically, between January 2024 and August 2026, the total value of assets held within Safe accounts fell precipitously from $66 billion down to $30 billion. This represents a contraction of more than 50% over a two-and-a-half-year span.

During that exact same timeframe, the total value locked (TVL) across the broader decentralized finance landscape grew by roughly 40%. At the same time, the aggregate supply of stablecoins in circulation across the crypto markets expanded by approximately 135%. However, the volume of stablecoins held inside Safe accounts on the Ethereum network grew by a meager 11%, a stark underperformance relative to the macroeconomic conditions of the industry.

Even more alarming to investors, Safe’s historical dominance in specific token categories has eroded significantly. According to Greenfield’s analysis, Safe’s share of total USDC stablecoin circulating supply dropped from 12.8% down to just 2.5%.

Emphasizing the gravity of these trends, Samadi noted that in the exact sector of the digital asset economy that has experienced the most rapid expansion—and in the precise market segment that self-custody infrastructure is uniquely engineered to serve—Safe has steadily lost competitive ground for thirty consecutive months.

At the core of these operational and financial concerns, Greenfield places the blame squarely on the current composition of the foundation’s leadership. The investor argues that the foundation suffers from a distinct lack of independent board members possessing the requisite background in experienced, unbiased decision-making. Furthermore, the firm has raised direct allegations of conflicts of interest within the leadership ranks.

Specifically, Greenfield pointed to the dual roles and affiliations of current board members, noting Stefan George’s ongoing involvement with Gnosis, alongside Richard Meissner’s direct ties to various corporate entities that actively develop and operate commercial products built on top of the Safe ecosystem.

For months, Greenfield states that it has attempted to work cooperatively behind the scenes, urging the foundation to voluntarily restructure its governance framework. These proposed changes included the replacement of George and a deliberate expansion of the board to incorporate independent, externally recruited professionals who bring specialized expertise in corporate finance, institutional risk management, and long-term business strategy. Having exhausted internal communication channels without achieving the desired structural reforms, Greenfield has now formally turned to Swiss regulatory authorities. The firm is officially asking the ESA to examine the foundation’s internal governance practices and determine whether mandatory corrective measures must be enforced to safeguard the interests of the ecosystem and its stakeholders.