Summary:
- Safe (formerly Gnosis Safe) is a multisig smart account wallet that spun off from the popular Gnosis Multisig solution, and is widely used by both individual users and enterprises.
- Individual users can set up a policy of "2 of 3" signatures for their wallet so that they do not lose their funds if one private key is compromised.
- For organizations, Safe requires several parties to sign off on crypto transactions, so there isn't any single wallet holder that controls the funds.
- Note: In 2023, Gnosis Safe completed its rebrand and now operates simply as Safe. The old
gnosis-safe.iodomain has been retired — the official product now lives at safe.global (app:app.safe.global), and the non-profit steward is the Safe Ecosystem Foundation (safefoundation.org).
Self-custodying your crypto is both a liberating and scary concept — on one hand, you have sole control over your funds. On the other hand, if you lose your private key, you have no one to turn to.
Safe lets you have self-custody AND a back-up solution.
What Is Safe (Formerly Gnosis Safe)?
Safe is a non-custodial, multisig smart account wallet that evolved from its predecessor, the Gnosis Multisig wallet, and later from the product known as Gnosis Safe.
Conventionally, most crypto users store their crypto in a single-key wallet, such as MetaMask. To approve any transaction — like sending crypto out of the wallet — a private key, generated from that wallet's unique 12-word seed phrase, is required. If this private key is compromised or leaked, the crypto can be stolen.
What if your funds were secured not with one but three private keys? This way, even if you lose one key, you can still access your funds with the other two.
This is what Safe's multisig wallet enables.
Multisig wallets require confirmation from — as the term implies — multiple signatures, that is, several private keys, before a transaction can be executed.
And if those funds belong to a crypto project or a DAO, the multisig system prevents any single employee from stealing or losing the money, because multiple signatures are needed to approve the transaction.
Multi-signature wallets are often used in DAO projects where fund management goes through several parties as a protective layer against misuse.
Historically, in the aftermath of the FTX collapse in November 2022, Safe saw an influx of funds as users sought to take their crypto off custodial platforms. That flight to self-custody has continued to shape wallet adoption trends in the years since.
How Does Safe Work?
At its core, Safe is a smart contract running on many blockchains, including Ethereum, Arbitrum, Optimism, Polygon, Base, Gnosis Chain, and Avalanche, among others.
As a multisig smart contract wallet, it requires confirmation from not one but several wallet holders, each with a different signature, in order to execute a transaction.
Let's say you run a business with 3 stakeholders. You can either pre-set the wallet to require approval from 2 out of 3 (2/3), or all 3 people, for any transaction to be executed. This ensures that no single person controls the funds.
Even if the funds belong to you alone, Safe's multisig wallet lets you set up at least 3 different owner wallets with a policy of at least "2 of 3" signatures. This way, even if one of your private keys is compromised, your funds remain safe, as another signature is needed to access them.
The Safe protocol is not unique in nature, but it remains among the most popular and flexible solutions in the field — Safe secures tens of billions of dollars in assets and is a preferred storage solution for many well-known projects and enterprises. (Source: safe.global)
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Who Manages Safe?
The Gnosis project has been around for years, with its initial wallet carrying the name Gnosis Multisig. Interest in the platform grew to such an extent that in 2022, the project raised significant funding to spin out on its own.
Following a community vote, the project branched away from the legacy Gnosis project. What was formerly the Gnosis Safe wallet completed its rebrand in 2023 and is now known simply as Safe.
The Safe ecosystem is stewarded by the Safe Ecosystem Foundation (safefoundation.org), a non-profit organization, and governed through a DAO mechanism — SafeDAO — by means of its native governance token, SAFE. Stakeholders use the SAFE token to vote on the development and direction of the Safe ecosystem.
According to Safe's official resources, millions of Safe accounts have been deployed to date, collectively securing many billions of dollars in digital assets across supported networks. (Source: safe.global)
Key User Features of Safe
Safe contains several improvements over the legacy "Multisig" wallet. (Source: safe.global) These include:
- Available on web browsers, desktop, or mobile.
- Suitable for both individual users and retail crypto investors, as well as organizations managing large volumes of crypto assets. Private users can rely on Safe's high security by combining different wallets and devices to confirm their transactions.
- Supports ETH and ERC-20 tokens as well as ERC-721-based NFTs.
- Can be integrated with both software and hardware crypto wallets.
- Interfaces with DeFi protocols directly — meaning you can invest, borrow, earn, or pay people straight from your Safe account.
- Modern smart account features, including account abstraction capabilities such as transaction batching, gas abstraction, and modular security policies.
Conclusion
The balance between security and decentralization is one of the main issues facing Web3. Solutions such as Safe exist to advance Web3's core idea of democratizing the Internet by extending more control to more users. Safe remains among the most popular solutions of its kind. Among its users is Vitalik Buterin himself, co-founder of the Ethereum blockchain, on which the Safe protocol was originally built.
