Greenfield Capital, a prominent investor in the Safe ecosystem, has escalated a prolonged dispute regarding the project’s leadership by filing a formal supervisory complaint with Switzerland’s foundation watchdog. The legal and regulatory move seeks to trigger significant changes to the Safe Ecosystem Foundation’s board following months of private engagement that investor representatives say failed to resolve critical governance concerns.
In an open letter addressed to the wider Safe community, Jascha Samadi, founding partner at Greenfield Capital, detailed the decision to petition Switzerland’s Federal Supervisory Authority for Foundations (ESA). According to Samadi, the regulatory intervention comes after his firm grew increasingly concerned about the strategic trajectory and operational health of Safe since early 2025. Those concerns center on what Greenfield views as underperformance relative to the broader cryptocurrency market, alongside a structural lack of independent voices and diverse expertise on the foundation’s governing board.
Samadi noted that the decision to involve Swiss regulators was not taken lightly, explaining that his firm exhausted other avenues before taking public action. After more than a year of intensive research, ongoing dialogue, and considerable patience, Greenfield ultimately concluded that the Safe project cannot reach its full market potential under its current governance framework and leadership structure.
In response to the developments, a spokesperson for the Safe Ecosystem Foundation, Samuel Akpan, stated that the organization has not yet received any formal inquiry or notification from the ESA. Consequently, the foundation declined to comment on the specific details or legal merits of the potential complaint.
The emergence of this high-profile governance dispute coincides with a critical financial period for Safe, which has publicly stated ambitious targets for the coming years. The project is currently targeting financial break-even and a doubling of its revenue performance throughout 2026. In a corporate announcement, Safe reported generating more than $10 million in project-wide annualized revenue at the close of 2025, alongside outlining a longer-term strategic ambition to scale toward $100 million in annual recurring revenue by 2030.
Greenfield Questions Safe’s Revenue Growth and Market Share
Despite the forward-looking projections published by Safe leadership, Greenfield Capital has raised pointed questions regarding the project’s near-term revenue generation and broader market adoption metrics. The investor highlighted financial data from the second quarter, which recorded $1.98 million in revenue. When annualized, that figure translates to an operational run rate of approximately $8 million, a performance metric that Greenfield argues falls far short of the $20 million expectation set for 2026.
Furthermore, Greenfield argued that Safe has steadily lost ground within the digital asset ecosystem despite substantial growth across the broader decentralized finance and cryptocurrency sectors. To illustrate this point, Samadi pointed to specific longitudinal data spanning from January 2024 to August 2026. During this timeframe, the total value held within Safe accounts experienced a sharp decline of more than 50%, falling from $66 billion down to $30 billion. In stark contrast, total value locked across the broader decentralized finance market expanded by roughly 40% over the exact same period.
Additional market indicators cited by Greenfield point to a similar divergence in the stablecoin sector. While the total global supply of stablecoins grew by approximately 135% during the monitored timeframe, the volume of stablecoins held within Safe accounts on the Ethereum network grew by only 11%. More strikingly, Safe’s market share of USD Coin in circulation experienced a steep drop, falling from 12.8% down to 2.5%.
Samadi emphasized that these trends represent a troubling deviation from historical growth patterns, noting that in the exact cryptocurrency sector category that has expanded the most—and one that self-custody infrastructure is inherently best positioned to serve—Safe has consistently lost ground for two and a half years.
The investor attributed many of these strategic missteps and performance gaps directly to the composition of the foundation’s board, pointing to what it characterizes as a deficiency of independent members possessing experienced decision-making backgrounds in specialized financial and operational disciplines. Beyond general board composition, Greenfield’s open letter specifically raised concerns regarding potential conflicts of interest among existing leadership. The firm highlighted board member Stefan George’s concurrent role at Gnosis, as well as fellow board member Richard Meissner’s close professional ties to various entities actively involved in developing and operating core Safe products.
Before turning to Swiss regulatory authorities, Greenfield stated that it had spent several months pressing the foundation to restructure its governance framework. Those internal proposals included replacing George and expanding the overall size of the board through the inclusion of independent, externally recruited members with specialized expertise in corporate finance, risk management, and long-term business strategy. With those private discussions failing to yield the desired structural changes, Greenfield is now asking the Swiss watchdog to examine the foundation’s administrative practices and determine whether corrective measures are necessary to safeguard the interests of the community and investors.
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