Macauley Peterson

Gnosis Venture Studios, a branch of Gnosis known for developing on-chain finance solutions like Safe and Gnosis Pay, has unveiled uRamp. URamp is a new platform that facilitates transactions between on-chain assets and traditional fiat currencies.



Low-cost on- and off-ramps have remained a barrier to adoption for Web3 dapps, as most users are funneled through crypto exchanges or dedicated applications with relatively high onboarding fees like <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/moonpay">MoonPay</a>, which charges 1% for bank transfers and 4.5% for Visa cards.



URamp is <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/gnosis">Gnosis&#8217;</a> attempt to simplify the user experience of going between fiat currency and crypto, via its partnership with licensed stablecoin issuer Monerium, which, separately to uRamp, <a href="https://monerium.com/fee-schedule">currently</a> does not charge fees.&nbsp;



Read from our opinion section: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/blockchain-better-middlemen-swift">Blockchain really is better than middlemen</a>



Operating on Gnosis Chain, uRamp is compatible with any <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/evm">EVM</a> (Ethereum Virtual Machine) chain and allows the conversion of ERC20 tokens directly to and from users&#8217; offchain bank accounts.



Gnosis Chain is also fully <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/ethereum">Ethereum</a> compatible, and is part of Gnosis’ “wider mission of building a future where global payments are settled via community-owned, secure and open infrastructure,” according to Stefan George, co-founder of Gnosis.



“It’s another step aimed at rewiring and resetting the plumbing of our existing Web3 payments space in a more cost-effective and efficient manner,” he said.



The uRamp product is complementary to Gnosis Pay, which allows users to spend <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/stablecoins">stablecoins</a> directly from a linked Safe on Gnosis Chain using a Visa debit card. Several other efforts to provide similar services are in the works by established players <a href="https://consensys.io/blog/revolut-enables-crypto-purchase-directly-into-metamask-wallets-with-revolut">like</a> Consensys and Mastercard, and newcomers <a href="https://crossfi.org/">like</a> Cross Finance and Beam.



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/beam-qr-payments">The convenience of Venmo and Cash App on-chain? Beam’s working on it</a>



“Most of my time I&#8217;m now spending with financial institutions — and the future financial institutions which [are] Web3 projects, showing to them that they can actually become the next generation bank,” Gnosis Pay CEO Marcos Nunes told Blockworks.



Both Pay and uRamp initially focus on the euro stablecoin EURe, issued by Monerium, which Gísli Kristjánsson, chief technology officer of Monerium, said is targeting the “underserved EUR market.&#8221;



“Seamless conversion between traditional and digital assets is key to accelerating crypto adoption,” Kristjánsson said.



BootNode, Gnosis’ engineering partner, was responsible for getting from the proof-of-concept stage to the final product.



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/gnosis-visa-debit-card-debut">Gnosis Visa debit card debuts in Europe, letting users buy with euro stablecoin</a>



The uRamp platform avoids the trading fees charged by centralized exchanges and more expensive intermediaries, while providing Web3 users an IBAN — the International Bank Account Number used widely outside of the US.



LI.FI&#8217;s liquidity aggregation technology lets uRamp users access liquidity for trades across various blockchains, including Gnosis, Polygon and Ethereum.



Nunes analogizes Gnosis’ offerings to the early days of Skype and voice-over-IP.



“They were able to provide services on top of the telcos which could not change their back-end infrastructure,” Nunes said, adding, “gently, users will force the banks to optimize the back-end and [this] will accelerate the growth of the Web3 providers.”



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Gnosis uRamp joins suite of on-chain banking products

Jack Kubinec

After countless forum posts and Discord back-and-forths, MakerDAO’s expansive “endgame” plan is finally seeing concrete action.



Maker passed a poll initiating the Spark Lend DeFi protocol on the Gnosis Chain. This sets the stage for the impending launch of its DeFi-focused subDAO. The move is meant as an example for how Spark Lend can proceed after the Maker “endgame” is finalized and the subDAO becomes fully autonomous.&nbsp;



In preparation for the endgame, MakerDAO has launched a <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/are-subdaos-the-future-of-dao-governance">prototypical set of so-called subDAOs</a> meant to govern different aspects of the DAO. SparkDAO is Maker’s DeFi subDAO, and its <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/dai-savings-rate-us">Spark Protocol lending platform has been buoyed by the popularity of sDAI</a>, or savings DAI, a yield-bearing token benefiting from high Treasury returns.



Users can now access Spark Lend, an Aave fork with similar features, on both Gnosis Chain and Ethereum. While demand grows, Karpatkey — the treasury manager for Gnosis — is providing liquidity to the DAI market, essentially acting as a stand-in for Maker until it assumes the operations itself.



The endgame is largely aimed at reducing DAO governance fatigue, an issue MakerDAO founder Rune Christensen called the “central issue” of DAOs on the Unchained podcast this week. For now, the protocol’s governance process remains unchanged, and the passed proposal is headed to a second “executive” vote.



Maker subDAOs are meant to be specialized groups who can make decisions quickly. They operate with their own governance tokens and have a reduced number of stakeholders voting on each proposal.&nbsp;



Currently, Spark and other initial Maker subDAOs lack their own tokens and are not autonomous. While subDAOs could eventually overturn Spark&#8217;s work, Phoenix Labs CEO Sam MacPherson believes Spark sets a precedent for future subDAOs. Until SparkDAO governance starts in earnest, Maker&#8217;s focus remains on expanding Spark Lend&#8217;s deployment.



“Other chains will be putting out proposals, and we’re going to go to all of them is the idea,” MacPherson said.&nbsp;



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Maker subDAO branches out beyond Ethereum

James Cirrone

The Gnosis Card, a Visa-enabled debit card connected to an on-chain, self-custodial wallet, officially launched Monday on a stage at the Ethereum Community Conference, or EthCC.&nbsp;



The card and its payment network, Gnosis Pay, have been in development for over a year <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wN9qMVkkjx4&amp;t=14s">according</a> to Gnosis CEO and co-founder Martin Köppelmann.



The project combines Visa payment technology with Gnosis’ asset management platform called Safe.&nbsp;



<a href="https://blockworks.co/news/gnosis-safe-erc-20-tokens">Gnosis partnered with Monerium earlier this month for European transactions</a>, so now users can pay for items in the real world and online with the Gnosis Card using Monerium’s euro stablecoin, EURe.



At present, this is the only way to successfully complete transactions with the Gnosis Card, co-founder of Gnosis Friederike Ernst told Blockworks.&nbsp;



“You can have any tokens in the wallet — but if you’re out of EURe the [transaction] will decline. We will open this up to other [stablecoins] in Q4,” Ernst said in an email.



Ernst added that onboarded users can pay at any Visa terminal globally, and that if the payment is not in euros, a foreign currency exchange will occur like with any other Visa card.



Users can also connect their desired wallet to the card, including MetaMask, Coinbase Wallet and more.



In a previous iteration of the project, the card itself was a hardware wallet, which contained a chip holding the private key to sign messages, Ernst explained.&nbsp;



Gnosis realized this version of the card was impractical for a number of reasons, but mainly, users wouldn’t be able to use the Gnosis Card virtually, such as through Apple Pay or Google Pay.



So the team scrapped that idea and went with the current model: having a smart contract wallet linked to the card that uses token allowances.



“What happens now is that you give Gnosis Pay allowance to your smart contract wallet. This means you don’t need to sign the transaction (tx) every time, with the trade-off that you have to trust Gnosis Pay to not abuse the allowance,” Ernst told Blockworks.&nbsp;



Ernst also pointed out that decentralized apps (dapps) frequently use token allowances, and like most of those apps, the user can define the allowance with Gnosis Pay.&nbsp;



If a user loses their Gnosis Card, the assets are stored on Safe. So if that were to happen, a user’s funds wouldn’t be at risk, and they could just order a replacement card.



The project has also developed an application programming interface (API) that allows any crypto community or third-party wallet to issue their own customized Gnosis cards.&nbsp;



The Gnosis Card will be launching exclusively in the UK and Europe. Compatibility is coming next to the US, Brazil, Mexico, Singapore and Hong Kong, according to a statement from Gnosis.



Updated July 20, 2023 at 12:27 pm ET: Added additional comment from Gnosis co-founder Friederike Ernst. Clarified the Gnosis Card&#8217;s function.



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Gnosis Visa debit card debuts in Europe, letting users buy with euro stablecoin

Gnosis Pay, a payments solution tied to Gnosis Chain, is set to come out in a little over a week.



It’s the latest in a series of developments for Gnosis, which was founded in 2017 and shifted into a DAO in 2020. GnosisDAO later created the Gnosis Chain and incubated Gnosis Safe, and both products appear to have continued to drive demand.&nbsp;&nbsp;



Gnosis Safe, now known as Safe, <a href="https://forum.gnosis.io/t/gip-29-spin-off-safedao-and-launch-safe-token/3476">spun</a> off from the GnosisDAO in 2022, and now stores more than $39 billion of assets, according to its <a href="https://safe.global/">website</a>. Another <a href="https://dune.com/safe/all">estimate</a> shows that the US value of all the ERC-20 tokens in Safe accounts is approximately $58 billion.



With Gnosis readying its payment product — which appears to feature either a credit or debit card — and Safe <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/gnosis-spinoff-safe-gets-100m-to-further-ecosystem">receiving $100 million as part of their rebrand</a> last July, it’s about time to take a closer look at these intertwined entities.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Safe partners with Monerium for European transactions</h2>



Safe said Thursday it will include on- and off-chain euro payment capabilities through a partnership formed with stablecoin issuer Monerium.&nbsp;



Monerium’s fiat solution is set to be integrated on Safe’s platform, making Safe accounts “seamlessly connected to the SEPA payment system, eliminating the need for additional off-chain bank accounts, ramps, or centralized exchanges,” a statement said.



Safe accounts will be able to receive euros from external bank accounts because the Monerium integration will convert the fiat into its euro stablecoin, EURe. And if a Safe account holder wants to send its EURe, a similar process will happen in reverse, the statement said.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">MakerDAO wants to deploy Spark Lend on Gnosis Chain</h2>



According to a proposal on the MakerDAO forum by Karpatkey, a DAO that provides treasury management for other DAOs, Spark Lend could be expanding to Gnosis Chain.



Spark Lend, <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/makers-spark-protocol-dai">created through the launch of the Spark Protocol</a> in May 2023, is a lending engine powered by Maker, and users can <a href="https://www.sparkprotocol.io/">borrow</a> DAI from Maker at a 3.43% interest rate.



Gnosis and Maker have had a longtime partnership: GnosisDAO contributed around $140 million to Maker’s vaults, and GNO, Gnosis’s native token, was already listed as collateral on Spark Lend, according to Karpatkey.



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true">.<a href="https://twitter.com/karpatkey?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@karpatkey</a> has put forth a proposal to launch Spark Protocol on <a href="https://twitter.com/gnosischain?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@gnosischain</a>! The formidable Maker-Gnosis strategic partnership could reach new milestones, with <a href="https://twitter.com/GnosisDAO?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@GnosisDAO</a> embracing Endgame and the launch of the first DAI-centric lending protocol on Gnosis Chain. ↓ <a href="https://t.co/7PP5GlmZbv">pic.twitter.com/7PP5GlmZbv</a>&mdash; Maker (@MakerDAO) <a href="https://twitter.com/MakerDAO/status/1676619439587065858?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 5, 2023</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Gnosis chain security upgrade</h2>



Gnosis <a href="https://twitter.com/gnosischain/status/1675957560397152273">selected</a> Succinct Labs’ Ethereum ZK Light Client as the solution to secure its mainnet omnibridge.



The Gnosis Omnibridge <a href="https://docs.gnosischain.com/bridges/tutorials/using-omnibridge/">bridges</a> ERC-20 tokens between Gnosis Chain and a number of other chains, including Ethereum, Binance Smart Chain, and the POA Network.



Gnosis told its users that this will increase security for anyone who bridges “assets or data from Ethereum into Gnosis Chain.”



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true">What does this mean for users? Users who bridge assets or data from Ethereum into Gnosis Chain will now have additional security from <a href="https://twitter.com/SuccinctLabs?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@SuccinctLabs</a>’s OmniBridge ZK Validator Smart Contract. ✅ Feel more confident about bridging assets to the Gnosis ecosystem.&mdash; Gnosis Chain 🦉 (@gnosischain) <a href="https://twitter.com/gnosischain/status/1675957569775603713?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 3, 2023</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



The ZK Light Client has been around eight months in the making, with Succinct’s first demo application dropping in November 2022, according to a <a href="https://twitter.com/SuccinctLabs/status/1587903196671844352">tweet</a>.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Gnosis Pay coming soon</h2>



Though public details surrounding Gnosis Pay have been scant, the product’s launch site offers some solid indications.



There’s an image of the front and back of an upcoming credit or debit card emblazoned with Gnosis’ insignia.



And a hint was dropped about Gnosis Pay in Karpatkey’s Spark Lend proposal.



“This month Gnosis Pay will be launching, allowing the issuance of credit cards. This opens up [sic] many collaboration opportunities with Spark i.e. allowing users to spend from their collateral in Spark,” Karpatkey wrote.



Gnosis Pay was set to launch in mid July, more or less coinciding with the EthCC conference in Paris.



Updated July 10, 2023 at 6:30 pm ET: Clarified Karpatkey&#8217;s role in MakerDAO.



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Since Gnosis spinout, Safe locking down ERC-20 tokens

Shalini Nagarajan

An unidentified hacker executed a hostile takeover of sanctioned cryptocurrency mixer Tornado Cash over the weekend. They successfully gained control over the protocol&#8217;s governance by submitting a malicious governance proposal, enabling them to assume full authority.



Samczsun, a security researcher at crypto-focused venture firm Paradigm, said in a tweet on Sunday that the attacker granted themselves 1.2 million votes through a malicious proposal.&nbsp;



They gained complete control over Tornado Cash&#8217;s governance by generating more fake votes than legitimate votes, surpassing the threshold of 700,000.



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true">On 2023/05/20 at 07:25:11 UTC, Tornado Cash governance effectively ceased to exist. Through a malicious proposal, an attacker granted themselves 1,200,000 votes. As this is more than the ~700,000 legitimate votes, they now have full control.<a href="https://t.co/nY87XmrYgT">https://t.co/nY87XmrYgT</a> <a href="https://t.co/h9qjc3xRqz">pic.twitter.com/h9qjc3xRqz</a>&mdash; @samczsun.com (@samczsun) <a href="https://twitter.com/samczsun/status/1660012956632104960?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 20, 2023</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



Tornado Cash is a decentralized privacy tool on the Ethereum blockchain that works by mixing funds pooled from multiple parties in uniform amounts, so it&#8217;s harder for anyone to trace specific deposits and withdrawals.



The protocol was built with a governance token called <a href="https://blockworks.co/price/torn" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">TORN</a>, allowing token holders to participate in decision-making. The protocol is <a href="https://blog.chainalysis.com/reports/tornado-cash-sanctions-challenges/#:~:text=Decentralized%3A%20Tornado%20Cash%27s%20codebase%20is,decentralized%20autonomous%20organization%20(DAO)." target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">managed</a>, at least partially, by a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) comprised of these token holders.



By gaining control over Tornado Cash&#8217;s governance, the attacker has the power to withdraw all the locked votes and drain all the tokens in the governance contract.&nbsp;



“Now that they have all the votes, they can do whatever they want. In this case, they simply withdrew 10,000 votes as TORN and sold it all,” samczsun said about the hack.



The protocol itself is immutable, so ETH deposited by users into the mixer is not at risk.



Tornado Cash <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/us-treasury-bans-citizens-from-using-mixing-service-tornado-cash">faced sanctions</a> from the US Treasury in August 2022 due to allegations of laundering about $7 billion in crypto since its establishment in 2019. Among the laundered funds is a significant amount of $445 million that authorities say was hacked by the North Korean hacker group Lazarus.



Following news of the exploit, Binance <a href="https://twitter.com/binance/status/1660127515459895296" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">announced</a> a temporary suspension of TORN deposits until further notice.



Blockworks has reached out to Tornado Cash for comment.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">TORN recovers as proposal to reverse attack gains support</h2>



Technically, the code that was executed was not what token holders had voted for, but the contract contained an updatable dependency, and the attacker was able to <a href="https://twitter.com/0xngmi/status/1660043447913381888?s=20" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">replace</a> part of it after the vote — effectively a bait and switch.



TORN plunged over 36% after the attack, according to Blockworks Research data.&nbsp;



But the token recovered over 8% on Monday after the person who anonymously gained control of the protocol&#8217;s governance suggested a plan to undo the harmful code.



According to the <a href="https://etherscan.io/address/0x1FAd009aD35689B5a9B91486148F2F32AFE31e23#code" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">new proposal</a>, the attacker&#8217;s ownership of tokens would be reduced to zero. 



Based on current indications, it appears likely that the proposal will be approved once voting concludes on May 26. As of press time, there were over 517,000 votes in favor of the proposal.



In the Tornado Cash community forum, one user, using the pseudonym Tornadosaurus-Hex expressed belief that there is a &#8220;good chance&#8221; the attacker will follow through with the proposal.&nbsp;



The user emphasized the significance of the proposal, even though the community may not have a say in its implementation.



Meanwhile, 0xdeadf4ce, another community member, said on Twitter that the new proposal could revert the damage done to the protocol’s governance.



“Either they&#8217;re giga trolling or it will end up being an expensive but not disastrous lesson in Governance security,” they added.



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true">TornadoCash attacker deployed new proposal that, if executed, would seemingly revert the damage done to the Governance functionality. Either they&#39;re giga trolling or it will end up being an expensive but not disastrous lesson in Governance security.<a href="https://t.co/QMWYFsi8kP">https://t.co/QMWYFsi8kP</a>&mdash; 0xdeadf4ce (@0xdface) <a href="https://twitter.com/0xdface/status/1660395508521738240?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 21, 2023</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



They speculated that the new proposal might be an effort to increase the price of TORN, which plunged after the governance takeover.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Funds at risk on Gnosis Chain</h2>



The true target may also be a smaller implementation of Tornado called Nova, deployed on Gnosis Chain. Unlike the primary Ethereum pool, Nova is fully upgradeable by governance, meaning the ether in the pool are fully at risk of loss.



There is a 7-day timelock on upgrading the protocol’s contract, meaning any users with ETH in the pool, have a window of time to rescue their funds.



<a href="https://twitter.com/samczsun/status/1660042906500214784?s=20">https://twitter.com/samczsun/status/1660042906500214784?s=20</a>



Currently, there are roughly 500 ether, worth about $900,000 in <a href="https://gnosisscan.io/address/0xd692fd2d0b2fbd2e52cfa5b5b9424bc981c30696" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">the contract</a>.



Macauley Peterson contributed reporting.



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Hijacker’s Remorse in Tornado Cash Governance Tussle?

Ornella Hernandez

<div id="highlights-block_62fcdb453f067" class="highlights">
 <ul>
 <li>NFTfi is to become the first NFT lending platform to offer its users NFT rights management enabled loans</li>
 <li>Gnosis Safe recently rebranded to Safe following $100M raise</li>
 </ul>
 
</div>



The NFT lending protocol NFTfi and digital asset manager Safe, formerly Gnosis Safe, partnered to develop a new product for non-fungible token owners intended to provide added value to digital assets.



Usually, an NFT owner’s rights — to display an NFT, access token-gated content, sign transactions with it or receive an airdrop, for example — are tied to the blockchain address associated with the wallet holding the NFT.&nbsp;



When that digital asset is transferred out of that wallet, such as in the case of an NFT-collateralized loan or NFT rental, the holder may essentially be giving up physical ownership.&nbsp;



The challenge is to improve NFT rights efficiency. The solution proposed by NFTfi and Safe is an NFT Rights Management Wallet to allow Safe Ethereum wallet users to segregate and delegate certain rights and permissions associated with an NFT to other Ethereum addresses.&nbsp;



As part of the partnership, Safe announced an investment of an undisclosed amount in NFTfi, which will become part of the Safe product suite. Gnosis Safe recently rebranded to Safe following a <a href="https://snapshot.org/#/gnosis.eth/proposal/0x5187694133abfb3d140acce3b9ac2ecf033c657c816a18dc25d2e0c1a2a29ec7" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">community vote</a> to spin-off and a <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/gnosis-spinoff-safe-gets-100m-to-further-ecosystem/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">$100 million injection of capital led by 1kx</a> crypto fund.  



Web3 development studio BootNode led the technical implementation of the open-source NFT Rights Management Wallet product.



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">What are the benefits of a NFTfi NFT wallet?</h3>



Stephen Young, CEO of NFTfi, told Blockworks that the Rights Management Wallet is not use case specific, and that the long-term vision is to “usher in a new era of utility” and “unlock tremendous value for the entire NFT space.”



The immediate benefit for NFTfi, according to Young, is that it makes loans more convenient and cheap. If an NFT is used as collateral in a secured NFT loan, it is moved to an escrow third party wallet for the duration of the loan.&nbsp;



Programmable NFT assets plus rights management technology, on the other hand, would permit the NFT owner to delegate transfer rights to NFTfi, instead of transferring the asset for the loan period, while still retaining full NFT ownership.&nbsp;



As NFT financial products such as loans, liquidity tools and derivatives become more robust, NFTfi aspires to become the leading settlement layer for NFT financial transactions, added Young.&nbsp;



“It pursues a platform strategy in which external developers and teams can build agreement types, such as rentals or options, and use NFTfi&#8217;s existing distribution and liquidity to build profitable services on top” Young said.



Lukas Schor, the co-Founder of Safe, confirmed that the investment in NFTfi was not financed through the recent funding round because it occurred before the official spin-off from Gnosis and before the funding round was concluded.



When asked why Safe is focusing on NFT rights management, Schor said that Safe has already “gained significant traction with big treasuries” and that NFTs are an “important driver for retail users to adopt more secure self-custody setups.”&nbsp;



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">“With NFTs we think the awareness of retail to seek out more robust options is much higher. Besides the monetary value, NFTs also have emotional, sentimental and cultural value which make them irreplaceable in case they’d get lost,” Schor added. </blockquote>



In a statement shared with Blockworks, Manu Garcia, the CEO and co-founder of BootNode said that the project will enable rights efficiency, “which is to NFTs what capital efficiency is to DeFi.”



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NFTfi Partners With Safe To Create First NFT Rights Management Wallet

Sebastian Sinclair

<div id="highlights-block_62ccf5e97668a" class="highlights">
 <ul>
 <li>Early-stage crypto fund 1kx led the round, which also saw participation from the likes of Tiger Global, A&#038;T Capital and Blockchain Capital </li>
 <li>The strategic funding round comes as investments in the industry have taken a hit in recent weeks</li>
 </ul>
 
</div>



Stewards of Ethereum-based Web3 wallet Gnosis Safe said Tuesday they&#8217;ve received millions of dollars in funding from industry veterans ahead of a planned pivot toward becoming a full-fledged digital asset management platform.



Originally tooled as an Ethereum-based multi-signature smart contract wallet, Gnosis Safe has dropped its blockchain namesake and rebranded to &#8220;Safe&#8221; following a <a href="https://snapshot.org/#/gnosis.eth/proposal/0x5187694133abfb3d140acce3b9ac2ecf033c657c816a18dc25d2e0c1a2a29ec7" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">community vote</a> to spin off from Gnosis Ltd in April, according to a statement.



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">&#8220;For mainstream adoption of Web3, we need to overcome the risks and limitations of private key accounts,&#8221;Safe co-founder Lukas Schor said.</blockquote>



Non-profit organization Safe Ecosystem Foundation — development contributors to the Safe platform — has picked up $100 million for its efforts via a strategic funding round led by early-stage crypto fund 1kx.



Both the funding and strategic alliances will help Safe further its ambition of growing out an ecosystem of applications and tools to be built atop its smart contract account protocol, the foundation said.



The round, which comes as <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/vc-funding-slows-again-in-june-but-experts-say-worthwhile-projects-will-get-money/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">investments</a> in the industry have taken a hit in recent weeks, was also joined by industry heavyweights Tiger Global, A&amp;T Capital, Blockchain Capital and Digital Currency Group. 



A further 50 strategic partners and industry experts including Kraken Ventures, GSR, Polygon, ParaFi, Lightspeed, Polymorphic Capital and Superscrypt also participated.



Specifically, Safe evolved from a multi-signature application designed to leverage more than two parties to securely store user funds. Traditional Web3 accounts, including most crypto wallets, are controlled by a single private key that is often derived from a 24-word secret phrase. 



Safe attempts to decrease the point of failure resulting from a single key by spreading the risk to multiple parties in a group to green light a transaction before it is executed. The platform has since grown to include a decentralized autonomous organization, SafeDAO, as well as a native token, SAFE.



Built around its smart contracts protocol infrastructure, Safe plans to evolve into a platform designed to foster a host of other applications, including wallets.



Its developers said that as a self-custody solution, Safe has so far processed more than <a href="https://dune.com/queries/1173" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">600,000 transactions</a> with digital assets exceeding <a href="https://dune.com/gnosis_safe/Gnosis-Safe" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">$38 billion</a> under its belt. Many DAOs manage their treasury assets using Gnosis Safe.



The funding, the company said, will be used to build on its early success as it attempts to secure Web3 infrastructure.



&#8220;Safe provides a critical public good as a composable and use-case agnostic smart contract account that can control digital assets, data and identities,&#8221; Schor said.



&#8220;The transition towards smart contract accounts will be a joined effort by the entire Web3 community.&#8221;



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