Digital asset management firm Gnosis Safe raises $100m amid rebrand

The widely adopted digital asset custodian has successfully completed a fundraising and rebrand despite the current “crypto winter”.

Image source: Lukas Schor, co-founder of Safe

Digital asset management firm Gnosis Safe has raised $100m, while rebranding to simply “Safe”.

Investors in the round included 1kx, Coinbase Ventures, Tiger Global, Lightspeed, the Digital Currency Group, and NFT influencer Punk6529.

The firm’s contract-based multi-signature wallet is used to secure funds held by decentralised autonomous organisations (DAOs), enterprises, and retail and institutional users working within the Ethereum ecosystem.

You can easily see why some investors might want to invest in a “safe” decentralised finance (DeFi) offering.

The last year has seen a significant amount of devasting hacks on DeFi platforms, with hackers successfully snapping up $3.2bn worth of cryptocurrency in 2021 according to blockchain analysis firm Chainalysys, who predicted this number is set to shoot yet higher in 2022. 

One DeFi platform Mirror Protocol reportedly suffered a $90m exploit, a full seven months before it was reported in May. 

Safe claims its users include Bitfinex, BitDAO, and Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin, and that it manages more than $38bn in assets with 30 teams building on top of its technology.

The decision to rebrand follows a community vote made in April 2022, which led to the firm spinning off from parent company Gnosis.

Gnosis said the capital will enable the firm to grow its own ecosystem of applications and tools as well as its own smart contract account protocol.

“Safe has established itself as the universal asset management primitive,” said 1kx founding partner Lasse Clausen. “From DAOs to treasury management tools to institutional custody, Safe has achieved an incredible product-market fit throughout all segments of crypto and established itself as the absolute winner.” 

He added: “At 1kx, we have been long users of Safe and believe that developers and users are only beginning to understand the power of composable asset management.”