Safe

Safe is two things that share a name. The Safe Smart Account is a set of open-source smart contracts, first released as Gnosis Safe, that turn an onchain address into an account controlled by rules: typically a list of owners and a threshold, such as three of five, that must approve each transaction. Safe{Wallet} is the web and mobile app most people use to create and operate those accounts, at app.safe.global.

Two organizations sit behind it. The Safe Ecosystem Foundation, a non-profit foundation in Zug, Switzerland, is the steward of the protocol, the core contracts, governance and the SAFE token. Since 15 October 2025 the official Safe{Wallet} app has been run by Safe Labs GmbH, a Berlin company wholly owned by the Foundation, registered at Unter den Linden 10 under HRB 270980 and managed by CEO Rahul Rumalla. Before that, Safe says, its wallet instances were run by separate teams such as Core Contributors GmbH.

Safe's homepage claims more than $60 billion in assets held in Safe accounts, over 60 million accounts and more than $1 trillion in transaction volume across 40-plus networks, without dates. The Foundation reported in February 2026 that project-wide annualized revenue passed $10 million at the end of 2025 and that it aims to break even in 2026. SAFE is mainly a governance token today; the Foundation has said it plans to give it more utility in 2026.

A normal wallet is a single private key: whoever holds it controls the funds. A Safe is a contract that holds the funds itself and only executes a transaction when enough of its owners have signed. Each owner is usually a separate wallet, often a hardware device, so one stolen or lost key is not enough to move anything. Owners can be added, removed or swapped, and the threshold changed, by a transaction that the current owners approve.

Because the account is a contract, it can be extended with modules and guards. The Foundation's bug bounty lists supported modules for allowances (spending limits), ERC-4337 account abstraction, passkeys and social recovery. Each module adds features and also adds code that has to be trusted.

Safe{Wallet} collects signatures off-chain through Safe's transaction service, then one owner submits the final transaction and pays gas. Each owner should check what they are signing on their own device. Safe's help centre has a guide to verifying Safe{Wallet} transactions on a hardware wallet, and that step is the main defense against a compromised interface.

Creating and using a Safe account costs only network gas; Safe does not charge a fee to hold assets or to send them. Deploying the account is an onchain transaction, so it costs more on Ethereum mainnet than on a layer 2.

The one in-app fee is on native swaps, which route through CoW Swap or LI.FI. Safe's help centre publishes the full tier table. The fee goes to the swap provider, and a portion is passed to the Safe Foundation. The exact amount depends on execution, but the interface shows the percentage before you confirm.

Safe Pro, the plan for teams and organizations, has its own terms; Safe does not list its prices on the public legal page.

The contracts have a long record. Safe says they have been in production for more than nine years and have had more than 18 independent audits. The Foundation's audit page links reports for each release: version 1.5.0 was audited by Certora and Ackee, version 1.4.0 by Ackee, and version 1.0.0 underwent formal verification. A bug bounty pays up to $1,000,000 for high-severity contract bugs, $50,000 for medium and $10,000 for low, in USDC. Audits reduce risk; they do not guarantee there are no bugs.

The weak point has been the layer people use to sign. On 21 February 2025 Bybit lost about $1.5 billion from an Ethereum cold wallet held in a Safe. The Safe Ecosystem Foundation said on 28 February 2025 that the attack, attributed to the Lazarus Group, came through a compromised Safe{Wallet} developer machine and led to a disguised malicious transaction being proposed to Bybit's signers. External reviews found no vulnerability in the Safe contracts or in the source code of the frontend and services. The team rebuilt its infrastructure, rotated all credentials and restored the app in phases. The Foundation promised a full post-mortem; we did not find one published as of October 2026.

The lesson for users is that a multisig is only as strong as the owners' habit of checking each transaction independently. A threshold of signers who all trust the same web page can be fooled together.

• Custody: self-custodial. Safe Labs and the Foundation cannot move funds in a Safe; only the owners can.
• Upgrades: an account's contract version changes only if its owners approve the migration.
• Insurance and proof of reserves: not applicable, since Safe holds no customer funds.

Safe fits funds that several people control together or that would be catastrophic to lose: DAO and company treasuries, investment funds, and individuals who want to spread control across several devices. For a single person with a modest balance, a hardware wallet alone is simpler, and our explainer on whether you need a multisig wallet walks through that decision.

To set one up, open app.safe.global (check the address), connect an existing wallet, choose a network, add the owner addresses and set the threshold, then pay gas to deploy. Fund the Safe by sending to its address on the same network. Test with a small amount first, and keep a record of every owner and how each key is backed up.

Moving funds out is a normal Safe transaction: create a transfer to another address, gather the required signatures and execute it. There is no lock-up or withdrawal queue. If the Safe{Wallet} app is unavailable, the account still exists onchain and can be operated through another interface that supports Safe contracts, because the contracts are open source.

The risk on exit is losing quorum. If too many owners lose their keys to meet the threshold, nobody can move the funds. Setting a threshold below the total number of owners, or adding a recovery module, guards against that.

Help articles live at help.safe.global, and service status is published at status.safe.global. General bugs in the apps go to the relevant GitHub repository; severe Safe{Wallet} security issues go to [email protected]. Safe's official X account is @SafeLabs_. Nobody from Safe needs your signer's seed phrase, and a direct message asking you to sign a transaction to fix your Safe is an attack.

Dated points from Safe and Foundation announcements:

• Originally Gnosis Safe; versions up to 1.3.0 are still listed as legacy Gnosis Safe contracts in the bug bounty.
• 21 February 2025: Bybit theft through a compromised Safe{Wallet} developer machine; Foundation statement on 28 February.
• 15 October 2025: Safe Labs GmbH takes over the Safe{Wallet} web app.
• February 2026: the Foundation reports $10 million-plus annualized revenue and targets break-even in 2026.

See how Safe compares with other software wallets for a feature-level comparison.