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Stewards of Ethereum-based Web3 wallet Gnosis Safe said Tuesday they’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 “Safe” following a community vote to spin-off from Gnosis Ltd in April, according to a statement.
“For mainstream adoption of Web3, we need to overcome the risks and limitations of private key accounts,” said Safe co-founder Lukas Schor.
Non-profit organization Safe Ecosystem Foundation — development contributors to the Safe platform — have picked up $100 million for their 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 investments in the industry have taken a hit in recent weeks, was also joined by industry heavyweights Tiger Global, A&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-sig 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 600,000 transactions with digital assets exceeding $38 billion under its belt. Many DAOs manage their treasury assets using Gnosis Safe.
The funding, they said, will aim to build on its early success as it attempts to secure Web3 infrastructure.
“Safe provides a critical public good as a composable and use-case agnostic smart contract account that can control digital assets, data and identities,” Schor said.
“The transition towards smart contract accounts will be a joined effort by the entire Web3 community.”
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