Greenfield Capital Files Supervisory Complaint Against Safe Ecosystem Foundation Over Governance and Performance Concerns

Crypto venture firm Greenfield Capital has escalated its long-standing dispute with the Safe Ecosystem Foundation, officially filing a supervisory complaint with Switzerland’s federal foundation watchdog. The legal move seeks an intervention and structural changes to the foundation’s board of directors following what the investor describes as months of failed private engagement regarding governance and underperformance issues.

In an open letter addressed to the wider Safe community, Greenfield founding partner Jascha Samadi outlined the motivations behind the regulatory action. The complaint, lodged with Switzerland’s Federal Supervisory Authority for Foundations (ESA), stems from mounting apprehension within Greenfield regarding the strategic direction and market health of Safe since the beginning of 2025. According to Samadi, the project has increasingly lagged behind the broader decentralized finance market, a trend he attributes directly to a lack of independent oversight and diverse expert voices on the foundation’s board.

Despite more than a year of intensive research, continuous dialogue, and considerable patience from the investment firm, Greenfield concluded that the project cannot fulfill its long-term potential under its current leadership and governance framework.

In response to the development, Samuel Akpan, a spokesperson for the Safe Ecosystem Foundation, stated that the organization has not yet received any formal inquiry from the ESA. He declined to offer further comments regarding the specific allegations or the potential merits of the supervisory complaint.

The emergence of this governance dispute coincides with a critical financial milestone period for Safe. The project has publicly stated its ambition to achieve financial break-even and double its revenue metrics throughout 2026. In a corporate announcement published earlier in the year, Safe reported that it closed out 2025 with more than $10 million in project-wide annualized revenue. Looking further ahead, the infrastructure project outlined a strategic roadmap targeting an ambitious $100 million in annual recurring revenue by the year 2030.

Greenfield Questions Safe’s Revenue Growth and Market Share

Despite the optimistic long-term financial projections released by the project’s leadership, Greenfield Capital has raised immediate red flags concerning Safe’s actual revenue generation and its ability to capture market share in a rapidly expanding sector.

The investment firm highlighted that Safe generated $1.98 million in revenue during the second quarter. This financial performance translates to an annualized run rate of approximately $8 million, a figure that falls drastically short of the internal and market expectations of $20 million for 2026.

Furthermore, Greenfield argued that Safe has been actively losing ground while the broader cryptocurrency and decentralized finance markets have experienced substantial expansion. Samadi pointed to specific on-chain metrics spanning a two-and-a-half-year period from January 2024 to August 2026. During this timeframe, the total value held securely within Safe accounts plummeted from $66 billion down to $30 billion, marking a decline of more than 50 percent. In stark contrast, the total value locked across the broader decentralized finance ecosystem grew by roughly 40 percent over the same period.

Additional data cited by the investor underscores the contraction of Safe’s footprint in core sectors. While the global supply of stablecoins grew by approximately 135 percent between early 2024 and mid-2026, the volume of stablecoins held inside Safe accounts on the Ethereum network increased by a meager 11 percent. More notably, Safe’s overall market share of USDC in circulation dropped precipitously from 12.8 percent down to just 2.5 percent.

Samadi emphasized that within the very category that has witnessed the most aggressive growth—and one that self-custody infrastructure is ideally positioned to serve—Safe has steadily surrendered its competitive advantage over the past thirty months.

The investor links these operational and market setbacks directly to systemic issues within the foundation’s governance structure, specifically highlighting a shortage of independent board members equipped with objective, experienced decision-making capabilities. Beyond the lack of independent oversight, Greenfield’s open letter pointed to potential conflicts of interest within the existing board. The firm singled out board member Stefan George for his concurrent role at Gnosis, as well as fellow board member Richard Meissner due to his close professional ties with various commercial entities actively developing and operating Safe-related products.

Prior to taking the step of filing a formal complaint in Switzerland, Greenfield stated that it spent many months urging the foundation to voluntarily restructure its governance. These proposals included replacing George and expanding the board to incorporate independently recruited members possessing specialized expertise in corporate finance, risk management, and strategic business development.

With those private appeals failing to yield the desired structural reforms, Greenfield is now relying on the Swiss regulatory watchdog to independently examine the foundation’s governance practices and determine whether mandatory corrective measures must be enforced to protect the interests of the ecosystem and its stakeholders.