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

Venture capital firm Greenfield Capital has escalated its ongoing dispute with the Safe Ecosystem Foundation by filing a formal supervisory complaint with Switzerland’s federal foundation watchdog. The legal move seeks to compel structural changes to the foundation’s board following more than a year of private discussions and unsuccessful attempts to resolve deep-seated governance concerns.

In an open letter published on Sunday addressed to the broader Safe community, Jascha Samadi, a founding partner at Greenfield Capital, detailed the motivations behind the escalation. Samadi revealed that the complaint submitted to Switzerland’s Federal Supervisory Authority for Foundations (ESA) was born out of mounting anxieties regarding the trajectory of Safe since early 2025. The venture firm pointed directly to the project’s underwhelming financial performance relative to the wider digital asset market and what it characterized as a glaring lack of truly independent voices on the foundation’s governing board.

According to Samadi, the decision to involve regulatory oversight came only after exhausting all other avenues for collaborative reform. The firm stated that despite conducting over a year of thorough research, maintaining consistent dialogue, and exercising considerable patience, it ultimately concluded that the Safe project cannot possibly reach its full potential under its current governance structure and leadership framework.

In response to inquiries regarding the regulatory action, Samuel Akpan, a spokesperson for the Safe Ecosystem Foundation, stated that the foundation has not yet received any formal inquiry from the ESA. Akpan declined to comment further on the specifics or the potential merits of the complaint filed by Greenfield.

This escalating governance battle arrives at a critical juncture for Safe, which has publicly set ambitious financial milestones for the immediate future. The project has targeted reaching a break-even financial state alongside a doubling of its revenue throughout 2026. Earlier in February, Safe released an official project announcement highlighting that it had closed out the previous year with more than $10 million in annualized project-wide revenue. Furthermore, the project outlined a much broader, long-term strategic ambition to scale its operations toward achieving $100 million in annual recurring revenue by the year 2030.

Greenfield Questions Safe’s Revenue Growth

Despite the optimistic financial projections trumpeted by project leadership, Greenfield Capital expressed deep skepticism, focusing heavily on what it views as a concerning lag in actual revenue generation. The investor highlighted a recent second-quarter revenue figure of $1.98 million. When annualized, this figure translates to a run rate of roughly $8 million—a performance metric that falls drastically short of the $20 million expectation that stakeholders had anticipated for 2026.

Greenfield argued that Safe is actively losing significant ground in the industry, struggling to maintain its footing even as the broader cryptocurrency market experiences robust expansion. Samadi pointed to a stark timeline stretching from January 2024 through August 2026, during which the total value held within Safe accounts plummeted from $66 billion down to $30 billion. This represents a staggering decline of more than 50% in assets under management.

During that exact same comparative period, the total value locked (TVL) across the broader decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystem managed to grow by an impressive 40%. Greenfield used these metrics to illustrate that Safe’s contraction is an isolated underperformance rather than a symptom of a broader market downturn.

Further illustrating the widening gap between sector growth and Safe’s utilization, the venture firm noted that the total global stablecoin supply surged by roughly 135% over the same timeframe. However, the volume of stablecoins actually held within Safe accounts on the Ethereum network crawled upward by a meager 11%. More critically, Safe’s historical dominance over the circulating supply of USDC suffered a severe contraction, tumbling from 12.8% down to just 2.5%.

Samadi emphasized the gravity of these trends within a sector where self-custody solutions should theoretically be thriving. He noted that in the very category that has experienced the most aggressive market growth—and one that self-custody infrastructure is inherently positioned to serve—Safe has consistently lost ground for two and a half years.

The venture capital firm explicitly linked these negative performance indicators directly to ongoing governance failures, specifically citing the composition of the foundation’s board. Samadi criticized the current setup for lacking independent board members equipped with the objective, experienced decision-making skills necessary to steer a multi-billion-dollar ecosystem.

Beyond general independence concerns, Greenfield’s open letter raised pointed allegations regarding potential conflicts of interest within the leadership ranks. The firm specifically targeted board member Stefan George due to his prominent role at Gnosis, alongside fellow board member Richard Meissner, pointing to his structural ties to external commercial entities tasked with developing and operating core Safe products.

In light of these findings, Greenfield revealed that it had spent several months formally requesting that the foundation undertake a comprehensive governance restructuring. These private proposals included removing George from his board position and significantly expanding the overall board to incorporate independently recruited professionals possessing specialized, external expertise in traditional finance, rigorous risk management, and long-term business strategy.

Because those internal appeals failed to produce meaningful reform, Greenfield has now formally turned to the Swiss regulatory watchdog. The firm is asking the ESA to thoroughly investigate the foundation’s administrative practices and determine whether mandatory corrective measures must be enforced to safeguard the interests of the community and the long-term viability of the ecosystem.