Cryptocurrency investor Greenfield Capital has escalated its ongoing disputes with the Safe Ecosystem Foundation, announcing that it has officially filed a supervisory complaint with Switzerland’s federal foundation watchdog. The legal and regulatory step is aimed at securing structural changes to the board of the Safe Ecosystem Foundation, with Greenfield citing months of stalled private engagements and unfulfilled expectations regarding the project’s corporate governance and market performance.
In an open letter addressed to the wider Safe community on a Sunday, Greenfield founding partner Jascha Samadi detailed the motivations behind the regulatory action. According to the letter, the complaint submitted to Switzerland’s Federal Supervisory Authority for Foundations (ESA) was triggered by a growing sense of alarm within Greenfield Capital regarding the trajectory of Safe since the early months of 2025. The venture capital firm pointed to a combination of underwhelming financial metrics relative to the broader cryptocurrency market and a persistent lack of independent, objective voices seated on the foundation’s governing board.
"We have come to believe, after more than a year of research, dialogue and patience, that Safe will not reach its potential under its current governance," Samadi stated in the open letter, highlighting that months of bilateral discussions had failed to yield satisfactory structural reforms or strategic course corrections.
In response to the developments, Samuel Akpan, a spokesperson for the Safe Ecosystem Foundation, stated that the foundation had not yet received any formal inquiry or notification from the ESA regarding the complaint. Consequently, the foundation declined to comment on the specific details or legal merits of the potential regulatory action, maintaining a cautious stance while monitoring the situation.
The surfacing of this governance dispute coincides with a critical financial and operational juncture for Safe. The project has recently staked out ambitious targets, aiming to achieve financial break-even and a doubling of its revenue throughout the course of 2026. In an official corporate announcement released in February, project leadership reported that Safe had generated more than $10 million in project-wide annualized revenue by the close of 2025. Furthermore, the roadmap outlined a much broader long-term ambition: scaling the ecosystem to reach $100 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR) by the year 2030.
However, Greenfield Capital’s assessment of Safe’s financial health diverges sharply from these optimistic projections, forming a core pillar of the supervisory complaint lodged with Swiss authorities.
Greenfield Questions Safe’s Revenue Growth and Market Share
To substantiate its claims regarding Safe’s underperformance, Greenfield Capital pointed directly to recent financial reports. The firm highlighted that Safe recorded $1.98 million in revenue during the second quarter alone, which translates to an annualized run rate of roughly $8 million. Greenfield emphasized that this figure falls significantly short of the projected $20 million expectation that management has set for the 2026 fiscal year.
Beyond individual quarterly figures, Greenfield argued that Safe has been actively losing ground and surrendering market share despite operating within a broader crypto market that has experienced substantial growth. Samadi pointed to specific longitudinal data illustrating a contraction in key adoption metrics between January 2024 and August 2026. During this timeframe, the total value held within Safe accounts experienced a steep decline, dropping from $66 billion down to $30 billion—a loss of more than 50% of its asset base. This contraction stood in stark contrast to the wider decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystem, where total value locked grew by approximately 40% over the same period.
The investor also highlighted concerning trends within the stablecoin sector, which has otherwise served as a primary growth engine for digital asset infrastructure. While the total global supply of stablecoins expanded by roughly 135% between January 2024 and August 2026, the volume of stablecoins held in Safe accounts on the Ethereum network grew by a mere 11%. More starkly, Safe’s overall share of USDC in global circulation plummeted from 12.8% down to just 2.5% over the course of the tracked period.
"In the category that has grown the most and that self-custody infrastructure is best placed to serve, Safe has been losing ground for two and a half years," Samadi noted in his critique of the project’s strategic execution.
Greenfield directly attributed many of these systemic challenges to a fundamental deficit in independent board oversight. Specifically, the investor criticized the foundation for lacking independent board members capable of providing objective, experienced decision-making free from internal conflicts of interest. The firm’s public filing and open letter alleged tangible conflicts of interest involving existing board member Stefan George, due to his concurrent role at Gnosis, as well as fellow board member Richard Meissner, pointing to his ties with various corporate entities actively involved in developing and operating products within the Safe ecosystem.
Prior to taking the step of filing a regulatory complaint in Switzerland, Greenfield stated that it spent many months engaging directly with the foundation’s leadership. The firm’s proposals included requests to restructure the foundation’s governance framework, replace Stefan George, and systematically expand the board by recruiting independent external members who possess specialized expertise in traditional finance, risk management, and long-term business strategy.
With those private overtures failing to produce the desired internal changes, Greenfield is now asking the Swiss foundation watchdog to step in, examine the operational and governance structure of the Safe Ecosystem Foundation, and independently determine whether corrective measures, oversight interventions, or mandated board restructuring are necessary to safeguard the interests of the community and stakeholders.
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