Greenfield Capital, an investor in the Safe wallet ecosystem, says it has filed a supervisory complaint with Switzerland’s Federal Supervisory Authority for Foundations (ESA), seeking changes to the Safe Ecosystem Foundation’s board after more than a year of private engagement failed to resolve its governance concerns.
In an open letter to the Safe community published on Sunday, Greenfield founding partner Jascha Samadi said his firm became increasingly concerned about the state of Safe from early 2025, citing the project’s performance relative to the broader market and a lack of independent voices on the foundation board. The complaint, first reported by Cointelegraph, escalates one of the more unusual governance disputes in decentralized finance, because Safe’s foundation sits under formal Swiss supervision rather than being governed purely by token holders.
What the complaint actually asks for
Greenfield said it had spent months asking the foundation to restructure its governance. The firm wants the board expanded with independent, externally recruited members with expertise in finance, risk management and business strategy, and it has specifically questioned the continued presence of board member Stefan George, citing his role at Gnosis, and board member Richard Meissner’s ties to companies that develop and operate Safe products.
Samadi framed those ties as conflicts of interest that a properly independent board would not tolerate. The complaint now asks the Swiss watchdog to examine the foundation’s governance and determine whether corrective measures are needed. The ESA supervises Swiss foundations and can intervene when a foundation’s governance deviates from its purpose or Swiss foundation law.
The numbers behind the frustration
The governance fight comes at a delicate moment for Safe’s business. In a February 2026 announcement, the project reported more than 10 million USD in project-wide annualized revenue at the end of 2025, said it was targeting break-even and a doubling of revenue in 2026, and outlined a longer-term ambition to reach 100 million USD in annual recurring revenue by 2030.
Greenfield told the community the reality has fallen far short. The investor pointed to 1.98 million USD in second-quarter revenue, equivalent to an annualized run rate of roughly 8 million USD, against what it described as a 20 million USD expectation for 2026.
The letter also traced a sharp decline in the assets entrusted to Safe’s smart accounts. Between January 2024 and August 2026, Samadi said the total value held in Safe accounts fell from 66 billion USD to 30 billion USD, a decline of more than half, while total value locked across DeFi grew about 40 percent over the same period. Total stablecoin supply grew roughly 135 percent, according to DeFiLlama data cited in the letter, while stablecoins held in Safes on Ethereum grew only 11 percent, and Safe’s share of USDC in circulation fell from 12.8 percent to 2.5 percent.
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 wrote.
Why Switzerland matters in this dispute
Safe, formerly Gnosis Safe, operates the most widely used smart contract wallet infrastructure in Ethereum and has long positioned its Swiss foundation structure as a mark of institutional credibility. That structure now cuts both ways. A foundation registered in Switzerland is subject to ESA supervision, which gives an unhappy stakeholder a formal regulator to petition rather than leaving the dispute entirely to forum posts and governance votes.
That is the route Greenfield has taken after concluding, as Samadi put it in the letter, that Safe will not reach its potential under its current governance following more than a year of research, dialogue and patience.
The complaint also lands as Safe is pushing deeper into institutional markets. The project has unveiled a dedicated unit to build enterprise-grade wallets, a business line that depends on exactly the kind of governance credibility Greenfield is questioning. Institutional buyers tend to conduct governance diligence before committing treasury or customer assets to third-party infrastructure, and a public dispute involving a Swiss regulator petition is the kind of record that surfaces in those reviews.
What happens next
The ESA has not publicly commented on the complaint, and there is no fixed timeline for whether it will open a formal examination. Under Swiss practice, a supervisory authority can request information from the foundation, mediate between parties, or order corrective measures if it finds the foundation’s organization no longer guarantees proper execution of its purpose. It can also take no action at all if the concerns are judged to be outside its remit.
For Safe users, nothing changes immediately. Safe’s smart accounts are non-custodial contracts deployed on-chain, and a board dispute at the foundation level does not affect the operation of deployed wallet contracts or user funds. The dispute is about who governs the foundation that steers development, partnerships and revenue strategy.
The Safe Ecosystem Foundation had not publicly responded to the complaint at the time of writing. Greenfield, for its part, has made clear it views the complaint as a last resort after months of private negotiation, not the opening move of a hostile campaign.
The bigger question for crypto foundations
The dispute is a test case for the hundreds of crypto projects that wrapped themselves in Swiss, Dutch or Liechtenstein foundation structures during the institutional push of the past several years. Those structures were sold to regulators and investors as accountability mechanisms. Greenfield’s complaint is, in effect, a claim that the accountability mechanism should be used, and a reminder that a supervisory complaint is a tool available to any sufficiently frustrated stakeholder.
It also highlights a gap that governance tokens were supposed to close. Safe’s community could debate the letter on its forum, but the actual decision power over the foundation board sits with the foundation itself and, ultimately, with the Swiss supervisor. Investors who assumed token governance would resolve such disputes are watching a process that runs through Bern instead.
Source: Cointelegraph, Oct 5, 2026. This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice. Digital assets are volatile and carry the risk of loss.
ESA complaints move slow but the findings actually bind. if the watchdog rules the foundation breached duties this stops being token holder venting
and if the finding binds they have to reconstitute the board, which is actual teeth. most governance drama ends with a temperature check poll, this one has a federal supervisor
samadi going to the swiss ESA instead of just dumping the bag is kinda refreshing tbh. an actual adult governance fight
^ this. more than a year of private engagement and the board just sat there. at some point you file the complaint
Stefan George still on the board while running Gnosis, and Meissner tied to companies building Safe products. Nobody flagged this sooner?
stefan george running Gnosis while sitting on the Safe foundation board is the kind of overlap that would never survive at a listed company. someone finally filing paperwork about it
this overlap has been visible for a year at least, the difference is it now sits in a regulators inbox instead of a discord thread. paper trail beats vibes finally
more than a year of private engagement before going to the ESA means they tried the polite route first. swiss foundations move slow but at least this puts everything on record
samadi naming meissner and george by role in an open letter is the actual pressure move. swiss foundations can ignore token holder votes all day, ignoring an ESA case file is a different sport
naming them by role instead of by name was deliberate too. keeps it professional enough that the ESA actually reads the file
10M annualized revenue and the token still lagging the whole market. holders got every right to ask who is actually steering Safe
the lagging token is basically the whole complaint though. 10M annualized revenue and holders watching other wallet infra run, someone was going to escalate eventually
a wallet token lagging every peer while infra revenue grows is the loudest signal holders have. you can run a clean foundation and still fail the market test
10M annualized and the token still slides. at some point performance IS the governance complaint