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Multi-signature wallet protocol Gnosis Safe has raised $100M in a funding round led by venture capital firm 1kx and will rebrand as “Safe”.
Gnosis Safe users – a group that includes Bitfinex, BitDAO and Vitalik Buterin – manage more than $38B in assets, according to data from Dune analytics (that figure was just over $100B in February). Earlier this year, holders of Gnosis’ governance token GNO voted to spin off Gnosis Safe.
“In order to get Gnosis Safe to the next level, an ecosystem should be established around this new account standard,” co-founder Lukas Schor argued in the proposal to separate the protocol from Gnosis. “The spin-off will also enable the Gnosis Safe project to have an even stronger focus on its mission: increase adoption of smart-contract-based accounts.”
In addition to 1kx, the 60 investors include Tiger Global, Kraken Ventures, Digital Currency Group, Blockchain Capital, Coinbase Ventures and a number of industry veterans, such as Hasu of Flashbots and Lefteris Karapetsas of Rotki.
“As both a user and developer I find @gnosisSafe as an indispensable tool for every crypto user,” Karapetsas tweeted Tuesday, “and it is my hope to see it grow for the next billion users.”
The $100M raised will go toward the newly established Safe Ecosystem Foundation, a non-profit “protecting strategic assets and contributing to the further development of Safe.”
First called “Gnosis Multisig”, Gnosis Safe was built in 2017 so that the Gnosis team had a means of securely storing its own digital assets.
“After open-sourcing the project, it became the standard for multisignature-wallets on Ethereum,” Schor tweeted on Tuesday.
“But this is only the beginning. We are on a mission to make every account in Web3 a smart contract account,” Schor continued. “By moving away from private-key accounts, we will create a web3 ecosystem that is much more secure and accessible to a wider range of users. Safety nets such as account recovery and hybrid custody will make web3 much more approachable for many more user groups.”
