What is Safe?
Safe is the ownership layer of web3 securing >$100B+. It includes Safe{Core} a full stack of account abstraction infrastructure and the industry-standard multi-sig, Safe{Wallet}. The project is focused on making every Ethereum account, a smart account and enabling new use cases like AI, Staking, Gaming, SocialFi, DeFi, and Payments to flourish with gasless transaction, easy face-ID like logins, onramps, recovery and more. Safe currently has a large ecosystem of 200+ projects including Gnosis Pay and Worldcoin, deployed in over 15 networks, building on the Safe smart account standard. Safe{Wallet} is also used widely by individuals like Vitalik Buterin, Punk6529 as well as web2 giants like Shopify and Reddit for self-custody of assets and high value NFTs.
As of April 2023, over 8M Safe accounts have been created, making >40 million transactions. The open-source contracts are battle-tested and have been formally verified and audited multiple times. There have been no critical security incidents since Safe was deployed in 2018 and Safe remains the benchmark of security in the industry.
Why use Safe accounts?
Traditional web3 accounts are controlled by a single private key, often derived from a 24-word secret phrase. As long as a user owns this private key, they control the account. However, these private keys regularly get lost or compromised, resulting in the complete loss of the assets associated with the account.
Safe, on the other hand, uses smart accounts that can be individually configured to suit the custody needs of different user groups:
- Authentications using multiple private keys (multi-sig) or community-control (DAOs) as well as newer authentication methods like social login and passkeys.
- Modules to build automations into the account, assign spend limits and roles/heirarchies.
- Recovery and inheritance mechanisms with Safe{RecoveryHub}
- Improved transaction experience (transaction batching, gas abstraction)
- Transaction checks and hybrid-custody.
What is $SAFE?
$SAFE is the native ERC-20 governance token that stewards infrastructure components of the Safe ecosystem, including:
- Safe Contracts
- Default Interfaces
- On-chain assets
- Tokenomics
Tokenomics:
- Governance: SafeDAO is governed using the SAFE token (see SafeDAO Constitution). SAFE token holders can vote within the scope of governance of SafeDAO. To find out more about Safe{DAO} governance, visit the resource hub.
- Safe Activity Program: Locking SAFE can boost/multiply the rewards the participants receive from their activity in the Safe ecosystem.
- Future Utilities: As the Safe ecosystem evolves, the design space of utilities for the SAFE token will naturally expand. SafeDAO can vote on the implementation of token utilities and signal the direction of future explorations. The community is encouraged to be part of the exploration and implementation of future SAFE token utilities.
How many SAFE tokens are there in circulation?
Safe launched on April 20, 2022 with 1 billion SAFE Tokens minted by the Safe Foundation, an independent, non-profit organisation that contributes to the development of the Safe ecosystem. This is the SAFE token’s fixed max supply.
Further details around the initial circulating supply and tokenomics can be found here: https://safe.global/blog/safe-tokenomics