Safe
Safe Labs
Data verified on unchanged since the sources
Worth it if you manage a treasury or a team's funds: the account is a programmable multisig (for example 3-of-5 signatures) with roles, thresholds and spending limits.
Avoid it if you want a wallet for everyday solo use: it's built for teams and treasuries, runs on EVM networks only and has no native swap or staking.
Safe (formerly Gnosis Safe) is a self-custody multisig smart account for Ethereum and other EVM chains, designed for teams, DAOs and treasuries. Each account is a programmable contract requiring multiple signers (e.g. 3 of 5) to approve a transaction, with spending limits, role-based controls and transaction simulation. It is non-custodial infrastructure: users remain the only controllers of the signers. Safe contracts are open-source and audited multiple times, and collectively secure tens of billions of dollars.
Data & conditions
| Fund custody | Self-custody (funds in your control) |
|---|---|
| Type | Smart-contract wallet |
| Source code | Open-source |
| Recovery | Multisig (firmatari sostituibili) |
| Bitcoin-only | No |
| Supported chains | Ethereum, Polygon, Arbitrum, Optimism, Base, Gnosis Chain |
| WalletConnect | Yes |
| Security audits | Ackee Blockchain, Certora |
| Segment | B2C, B2B |
| MiCA / License status | Nessuna (wallet self-custody non-custodial) |
Strengths
- Programmable multisig (replaceable signers, thresholds, roles, limits); open-source, heavily audited contracts; de-facto standard for EVM treasuries and DAOs.
- Self-custody: funds stay in your wallet — the platform cannot touch them.
- No KYC: usable without identity verification.
- Open-source, verifiable code.
- Self-hostable: you can run your own instance or node.
- Public security audits.
Weaknesses
- Built for teams/treasuries, less suited to everyday solo use; no native swap/staking (relies on integrated external apps); EVM-only.
- No notable sovereignty drawback documented.
Verdict
Score 4.5/5, very strong profile. In its favour: programmable multisig (replaceable signers, thresholds, roles, limits); open-source, heavily audited contracts; de-facto standard for EVM treasuries and DAOs. The trade-off to weigh: built for teams/treasuries, less suited to everyday solo use; no native swap/staking (relies on integrated external apps); EVM-only.
On the Sovereignty lens the score is 4.8/5 (outstanding): the strength is privacy & anonymity (5.0/5), while fund control (4.4/5) is the weak link.
Promp's editorial rating based on real fees and net annual cost. Promp reviews third-party products independently.
"Sovereignty" rating: score computed on privacy/anonymity (30%), fund control (20%), censorship resistance (20%), trustless/auditability (20%) and costs (10%). Same data, different weights.
Reputation
What happened to people who used Safe, and what users say. External signals: they do not feed the promp.it rating.
Incidents & regulatory actions
Past incidents, resolvedDocumented and closed events. They stay on file: an operator’s past is data, not a verdict.
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Hack / funds theft Critical $1B ✓ resolved
Safe{Wallet}'s infrastructure was compromised and used to carry out the largest theft in crypto history: 1.46 billion dollars from Bybit. The contract code had no flaws — what gave way was a developer's laptop, then the company's AWS, then the JavaScript serving the web interface
On 21 February 2025 **1.46 billion dollars** left a Bybit multisig cold wallet. The forensic investigation run by **Mandiant** together with Safe's team, with independent findings from **Sygnia** and **BlockSec**, reconstructed a path that starts much earlier and **inside Safe**, not inside Bybit. On **4 February** the macOS workstation of a Safe{Wallet} developer is compromised, most likely through malware delivered by social engineering. On **5 February** the attackers use that developer's **AWS session tokens** — sessions already active, which let them **bypass multi-factor authentication** after several failed attempts to register their own MFA device — and enter Safe{Wallet}'s AWS infrastructure, where they stay until **17 February**. On **19 February** they modify the **JavaScript resources hosted on the S3 bucket** serving Safe{Wallet}'s web interface, injecting code that manipulates transactions. The trigger was surgical: the code activated **only** on transactions from the Safe address of one specific Bybit cold wallet. Bybit's CEO Ben Zhou described the result: Safe's interface showed the signers a legitimate transaction, while a different payload was sent to their Ledger devices. Nineteen days of preparation; the **FBI** formally attributed the attack to North Korean state actors of the **TraderTraitor** cluster (also tracked as Jade Sleet, Slow Pisces, UNC4899). What Safe stated, and which matters in full: the forensic review **found no vulnerabilities either in Safe's smart contracts or in the source code of the frontend and services**. The flaw was in the company's infrastructure, not in the protocol. Safe then **fully rebuilt and reconfigured all infrastructure and rotated all credentials**, restoring the service on Ethereum mainnet in phases. The funds were never recovered: the loss was absorbed by Bybit, which replenished its reserves. The link to this card, stated plainly: **the stolen money was Bybit's, but the flaw exploited was in Safe's house** — which is why the episode appears both here and on the exchange's card.
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FAQ
Is Safe custodial?
No. Safe is non-custodial self-custody infrastructure: the account is a multisig smart contract and only the signers you choose control the funds. Safe Labs has no access to the assets.
What is a Safe multisig?
It is a smart-contract account that requires multiple signers to approve a transaction (e.g. 3 of 5 signatures). It removes a single point of failure and is widely used by DAOs and treasuries.
Which networks does Safe run on?
Safe runs on Ethereum and on more than a dozen EVM chains. The contracts are open-source and collectively secure tens of billions of dollars.
Sources
- Official service page Custodia · Multisig · Funzioni Data verified on Jun 20, 2026
- github.com Sovranita.open source Data verified on Jun 20, 2026
- safefoundation.org Storia · Azienda · Security audit Data verified on Jun 20, 2026