Greenfield Capital, a prominent early-stage investor in the prominent digital asset infrastructure project Safe, has escalated a prolonged behind-the-scenes dispute by filing a formal supervisory complaint with Switzerland’s foundation watchdog. The legal and regulatory maneuver seeks sweeping structural changes to the Safe Ecosystem Foundation’s board of directors after months of private engagement failed to yield satisfactory resolutions to the venture capital firm’s escalating governance concerns.
In an open letter addressed broadly to the Safe community, Jascha Samadi, founding partner at Greenfield Capital, detailed the motivations behind taking the step with Switzerland’s Federal Supervisory Authority for Foundations, known as the ESA. According to Samadi, the decision arrived after his firm grew increasingly alarmed about the operational and strategic trajectory of Safe since early 2025. The investor pointed to a stark underperformance of the project relative to the broader digital asset and decentralized finance market, alongside a structural lack of independent voices holding fiduciary power on the foundation’s governing board.
Samadi emphasized that the escalation was not taken lightly, noting that the firm exhausted alternative avenues before involving Swiss regulators. After more than a year of continuous research, dialogue, and exercised patience, Greenfield Capital concluded that Safe cannot possibly 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, addressed the situation by stating that the foundation has not yet received any formal inquiry or documentation from the ESA. Consequently, the foundation declined to comment directly on the specific details or legal merits of the potential complaint brought forward by its investor.
This high-stakes governance showdown unfolds against a backdrop of ambitious financial targets set by the project. Safe has publicly stated that it is aggressively targeting a financial break-even point and a doubling of its revenue performance throughout the course of 2026. In an official announcement released in February, the project reported that it had achieved more than $10 million in project-wide annualized revenue by the conclusion of 2025. Furthermore, leadership outlined a much broader, long-term strategic ambition to scale that figure up 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 financial projections publicized by the project team, Greenfield Capital scrutinized the underlying metrics, arguing that current performance lags significantly behind the required milestones. The investment firm specifically highlighted recent financial disclosures showing $1.98 million in revenue for the second quarter. When annualized, this performance translates to a run rate of roughly $8 million—a figure that falls drastically short of the internal expectations and milestones required to hit a $20 million revenue target for 2026.
Beyond the immediate revenue run rates, Greenfield Capital argued that Safe was systematically losing ground and market share at a time when the wider cryptocurrency and decentralized finance sectors were experiencing robust expansion. Samadi pointed to specific data covering a two-and-a-half-year period from January 2024 to August 2026. During this timeframe, the total value held securely within Safe accounts dropped dramatically from $66 billion down to $30 billion, representing a decline of more than 50 percent. This contraction occurred starkly against the broader market backdrop, where total value locked across the decentralized finance ecosystem managed to grow by roughly 40 percent.
The investor noted a similar disparity when examining stablecoin metrics over the exact same historical window. While the total global supply of stablecoins expanded by approximately 135 percent across the industry, the volume of stablecoins held within Safe accounts on the Ethereum network grew by a meager 11 percent. More concerningly to the investor, Safe’s overall market share of native USDC in global circulation plummeted from 12.8 percent down to a mere 2.5 percent over the evaluated period.
Samadi argued that these metrics point to a troubling structural failure in capturing natural market demand. In a sector that has experienced some of the most aggressive vertical growth, and where self-custody infrastructure is ideally positioned to capture institutional and retail volume, Safe has actively lost ground over consecutive years.
The investment firm directly attributed many of these persistent operational and strategic shortcomings to a fundamental lack of independent board members possessing deep, objective, and experienced decision-making capabilities. Furthermore, the public letter raised specific allegations regarding potential conflicts of interest within the existing board composition. Greenfield pointed to board member Stefan George and his ongoing dual operational roles tied to Gnosis, alongside fellow board member Richard Meissner and his direct operational ties to various commercial entities engaged in developing and operating core Safe products.
To rectify these perceived structural flaws, Greenfield Capital revealed that it had spent several months pressing the foundation to fundamentally restructure its governing body. The proposed remediation included removing Stefan George from his governance seat and significantly expanding the board by bringing in independent, externally recruited members who possess specialized expertise in traditional finance, risk management, and long-term corporate business strategy. With those private requests continuously stalling, the firm has now formally asked the Swiss regulatory watchdog to examine the foundation’s internal governance practices and determine whether mandatory corrective measures must be enforced.
Crypto Startups & Venture Capital
Crypto Startups & Venture Capital
Crypto Startups & Venture Capital
