SafeDAO (SAFE)

Digital asset management platform, known for its multi-sig technology.

Basics

• Started in 2017.
• FKA Gnosis Safe, but spun out (4-2022).
• From this Twitter thread (1-1-2020):

"We made significant changes to the Safe strategy. We will turn Safe into a platform, which will allow implementing different recovery mechanisms and other functionality as modules. The mobile version and the web version will be merged into ONE product."

Audits & Exploits

• Gnosis Safe Multisig wallet can be back-doored during deployment according to OpenZeppelin.
• Scored 76% on DeFi Safety (4-4-2022), with the comment:

"Gnosis is not insecure; far from it. It has one of the most rigorous security processes we have come across, including 5 audits for each version of their past/current releases as well as the elusive Runtime Verification formal verification.

In addition to four different bug bounties that span across the entire Gnosis ecosystem, it is safe to say that plenty of experts have had their eyes on this code. It is equally clear that the protocol takes testing very seriously as per their excellent GitHub testing suite.

Nonetheless, you know us by now, there are always things to improve. In Gnosis' case, they fall short on one thing: documentation. Although a lack of documented software functions is not the end of the world, a lack of documented access controls is certainly more problematic.

Our analysts could not find any mention of the kind of power the Gnosis team holds over their smart contracts. Even if it may be implicitly stated in the software, it is the ease-of-access of this information that concerns us. The team should aim to document this further.

At the end of the day, the Gnosis Safe is undoubtedly a magnificent and essential infrastructure to this space. There are however two things we are sending them on our wish list:

1) Get back to us

2) Better documentation - we shall help thee with this"

Token

Launch

• On the Gnosis forum someone proposed spinning off Safe and creating the safeDAO with a SAFE token, 91% of people voted in favor on the poll (9-2-2022). Gnosis, announced plans to airdrop its SAFE token to almost 22,000 crypto wallets (19-8-2022). Got launched (29-9-2022).

Token Allocation

• From The Defiant (19-8-2022):

"The total supply of SAFE is 50M tokens, 60% of which will go toward treasuries of the DAOs that run Safe and Gnosis. Another 15% is allocated to current and future Safe employees, 15% to the Safe Foundation, which manages the project’s grants program, 5% to ecosystem incentives and 5% for rewarding early adopters."

Utility

• To facilitate revenue generation, Safe launched community-aligned fees for the native swap integration. Thus, SafeDAO accrued $1.7 million in annualized fees in Q3’24.

Technology

• Whitepaper or docs can be found [insert here].
• Code can be viewed [insert here].

Implementations

• Built on: Ethereum at first, announced its own Safenet L2 (4-12-2024).

How it works

• From Decrypt (12-7-2022):

"Whereas control of many crypto and Web3 accounts hinges upon a single private key, Safe utilizes smart contracts to customize account security, allowing for authentication that requires the use of multiple private keys (multisig), or community approval. Safe’s smart contracts can also integrate recovery and inheritance mechanisms into the storage of digital assets."

Interoperability

• Gnosis Safe Multisig supports ETH, ERC20 (Tokens) and ERC721 (Collectibles).
• "Supporting Arbitrum, Polygon, and BSC within the next 2 months" (12-5-2021). Got deployed on Avalanche, Optimism and Fuse (12-2021).

Other Details

Safe Apps

• From EthHub #112 (5-5-2020):

"Safe Apps allow users to interact with Ethereum applications straight from the Safe Multisig interface. Users are able to customize their own interface by selecting from a list of apps. If an app is not listed in the UI by default, it’s possible to add a custom app by simply putting in the link to that app. Once apps are added, interacting with them will feel like executing any other multisig transaction. If your Safe has multiple signatures required to execute a transaction, those same requirements apply to Safe Apps."

Snapshot Merger

• From The Defiant (19-3-2021):

"Gnosis has merged its multisig wallet, Gnosis Safe, with the off-chain (and therefore gasless) DAO governance dashboard, Snapshot, to create SafeSnap as an addable module for Gnosis Safe. Gnosis’ newly launched DAO governance tool, SafeSnap, aims to allow users to execute decentralized governance decisions without incurring expensive gas fees on-chain."

Usage

• Nearly 90,000 Safes have been created on the Ethereum mainnet (19-8-2022).
• From this Twitter thread (3-1-2020):

"Starting 2020, here's the @gnosisSafe in numbers:

~ 1600 Safe contracts deployed

~ 45k $ETH stored (~ 6M USD)

~ 8k transactions made "

• From Decrypt (24-8-2020):

"Now stores more than $1 billion in ETH and ERC20s."

Team, Funding, Partners

Team

• Lukas Schor; co-founder

Funding

• From Decrypt (12-7-2022):

"Raised $100 million in funding, the company announced this morning. The funding round was led by crypto fund 1kx and included 63 other contributors, including Tiger Global, A&T Capital, Blockchain Capital, ConsenSys, Polygon, and individual investors such as prominent NFT influencer Punk6529."

Partners

• Used by and partners with Authereum (12-2-2020).