Seriously, what is the strategy here?

Safe Ecosystem General Discussion
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Guys, seriously, WTF. This is the protocol securing tens of billions in digital assets, the literal “standard” for on-chain treasuries. Yet, it is being governed and developed like a side project from a confused research DAO.

I’ve rarely seen a project with such a critical role in the ecosystem handled so unprofessionally.

  • There is no coherent product strategy. Instead of hardening the core product and user experience that got you here, you’re launching a “research” unit. Following major exploits targeting your users, the response is an unaudited, un-integrated smart contract guard (Guardrail) and a GitHub action for co-signing. Who is this for? Do you seriously expect enterprises or DAOs to use a GitHub action to approve multi-million dollar transactions?

  • There is zero ownership of the user security experience. When high-profile users get drained, the response is silence or a shrug that the core contracts weren’t technically at fault. Your product is the entire user journey, not just the deployed bytecode. Hundreds of users have been affected by various hacks. Yet, there is no proactive communication, no transparent post-mortems, and no meaningful effort to build robust, integrated security tools that protect against common attack vectors.

  • There is zero respect for your existing user base. The abrupt shutdown of the mobile app with virtually no communication is a masterclass in how to alienate your community. Users were left scrambling, with official support threads full of confused and angry people. This isn’t a free-to-play game; it’s the interface for managing significant capital.

  • Features are thrown over the fence and forgotten. What happened to the grand vision of Safe{Core} Protocol and Safenet? The roadmap appears to have been replaced by niche, experimental tools that solve no one’s immediate problems, while the core product stagnates. These “research” projects feel more like resume-padding than a serious attempt to serve your users.

  • The priorities are completely backwards. You have a token that’s down over 90% from its theoretical highs, waning community trust, and active security threats targeting your users. The logical response would be to double down on core security, audits, insurance, and building out a rock-solid, enterprise-grade product suite. Instead, we get a research department. This is like a bank firing its security guards to hire a team of theoretical physicists.

Overall, there is only one conclusion. Safe built a product with incredible product-market fit, but is not willing to expend the resources or focus to maintain and secure it properly. Given that the protocol secures billions and the team raised hundreds of millions, this is a staggering abuse of the trust (and money) people put into this system.

You have proven to be incapable of prioritising the security and needs of your users. Just be honest about your pivot to a research collective so your actual users can migrate their funds without wasting more time and money.

(written by a multi-sig user with 8-figures secured, actively researching alternatives)

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Hey tejoraf492!

Will share also a written reaction to this tomorrow. But already wanted to offer that you could reach out to me via messages so we can schedule a call if you’re up for it. I’d love to understand in more detail the frustrations you mentioned and this usually is better in synchronous communication.

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It’s almost like they fired their only user researcher or something…

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First of all, I wanted to thank you for your trust in Safe{Wallet}. I definitely don’t take it lightly that you have confidence to use the solution to manage 8-figures and even more unfortunate to see you being frustrated about your general experience.

Also, appreciate you taking the time to write this all out. Some of the points you raise are fair or at least I can understand where you are coming from. Still wanted to share you my perspective as I do see things quite differently for the most part:

Core security isn’t being neglected. The Safe{Wallet} team has been investing heavily into increasing more resilient infrastructure (see also Rahuls tweet here). Safe Labs was established as a possibility to create a more secure, enterprise-grade solution, while ensuring that the investments made into this are kept community-aligned by establishing Safe Labs as a direct subsidiary of the Safe Foundation. Yes, this is taking some time, but it will lay out the foundations for exactly the “rock-solid, enterprise-grade product suite” that you are asking for. Safe Research isn’t a distraction, but a way to anticipate the threats and use-cases that will matter over the next years, not just this quarter. There are also several high quality ecosystem teams that we are working with for building co-signer and firewall-like solutions that would give users choice for security.

Safe{Research} is a calculated bet on bluesky innovation and a re-alignment with critical Ethereum (cypherpunk) values and self-custody. The Safe{Research} team is actually just a small part of the investments by the foundation today with 5 FTEs. The goal there is to have a research unit that can expand the limits of the Safe stack in terms of censorship-resistance, privacy and security, without being limited by the short-term needs of Safe{Wallet}. It’s very valuable to have an R&D team that is able to have a longer time-horizon and work in uncharted territories rather than product-based development cycles, and it’s definitely not uncommon in our industry where a lot of the value is created through innovation. Especially as Safe{Wallet} deployments are used at a scale and criticality that you also mentioned, it was challenging in the past to work on innovative tech while still fulfilling the scalability and resilience qualities that are expected from Safe{Wallet}, having a degree of separation through a separate team helps actually.

Building in the open approach. You mentioned the Guardrail project, which is indeed a research project, rather than meant to be used by most end-users. It aims to give impulses also to other builders to experiment more with Guards which will be a key component to bringing self-custody security to the next level. Generally, the research team is building very much in the open, having launched 9 publications and corresponding prototypes over the last 2 months only. If you follow the publications you could see how things generally point towards a pre-execution validation network that is decentralizing a key part of the current Safe stack (the tx queue) and allows additional validation services (like co-signers) to integrate and protect users. Instead of building this out behind closed curtains the research team chose an open approach, even if this means sharing smaller iterations that might not be the most exciting to everyone.

Bybit Post-Mortem. The Safe{Wallet} team shared a post-mortem that went quite into detail. Obviously, there is a balance to strike in terms of sharing too much in the open as this itself can open up new attack vectors. That being said, there were a lot of learnings across the ecosystem from this incident, which also includes ways to better communicate and respond. In addition to the post-mortem, The Safe{Wallet} team is constantly reinforcing security on all fronts

Product strategy is evolving. Yes, there have been a few shifts in the past, including Safenet and Safe{Core}. They’re part of the path from “just a multisig” to becoming more holistic smart account infrastructure. I still stand behind the strategic pivots being done there, even though these have always been hard decisions. What’s worse than giving up a project is sticking to it purely based on fulfilling internal or external expectations, rather than conviction. Particularly the shift from Safenet to more security-oriented research has been also welcomed by quite a few community members (see responses to this tweet, but also as part of conversations I had over the past weeks).

Mobile app being deprecated. Not sure I understand what you mean there, as I still use the mobile app regularly without any issues?

I hope this helps clarify some things. You haven’t reached out yet to schedule a call, but I hope you’ll still take up this offer. We can even try to find ways to do this somehow anonymously if you prefer not to reveal your identity. I sure hope that you’ll continue to use Safe{Wallet} in the future and continue to share constructive feedback.

Thanks.

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I want to double down on what Lukas shared above, and also acknowledge the frustration behind your post. I understand why things may feel unclear or even misaligned at times and that’s on us to communicate better and more frequently (and publicly).

To clarify a few points:

  • Strategy: At Safe Labs, our focus is on building resilient, enterprise-grade infrastructure and user-facing tools, while also exploring innovation through research. Both tracks are important, but user trust and security remain our top priorities. We attribute this internally as our “cypherprise” i.e., preserving our cypherpunk values while applying enterprise ggrade rigor

  • Security: This is front and center across everything we do right now. The upcoming mobile experience is designed with secure signing as its core, reflecting our commitment to making Safe the most reliable way to manage assets.

  • Mobile: Mobile is not going away. In fact, we’re doubling down. We’re launching a new cross-platform app on stronger foundations so we can iterate and maintain it properly. The first release will focus on secure signing, and we’re targeting early October.

I’ll follow up in the coming weeks with more detail on progress and direction on what we call “Safe Shield”. In the meantime, if you’d like to test the new mobile app and share feedback, we’d love to involve you.

Thanks again for raising these concerns. Discussions like this help us make sure we’re addressing what matters most.

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Thank you for the detailed replies. Unfortunately, they reinforce nearly every concern I raised, replacing concrete action and clear communication with corporate speak, strategic ambiguity, and what appears to be a significant disconnect from your own user base.

Let’s address this point by point.

  1. On “Core Security” vs. “Research”: You claim core security isn’t being neglected, yet your primary examples of investment are the creation of new entities (Safe Labs) and research arms (Safe Research). This is a deflection. Creating a subsidiary to build an “enterprise-grade solution” is an admission that your current offering isn’t one, and it kicks the can down the road. Framing research as “anticipating future threats” is a poor excuse when your users are being actively exploited by current threats that require immediate, practical solutions, not academic papers. The size of the research team (5 FTEs) is irrelevant; it’s about the allocation of leadership focus and priority.

  2. On the Bybit Post-Mortem: Calling that document a “detailed” post-mortem is, frankly, an insult to the community’s intelligence. It was widely criticized across the industry for its complete lack of substance, technical detail, and actionable takeaways. Leaders like CZ of Binance publicly called it out for being a non-explanation. The excuse of “not opening up new attack vectors” is a tired trope used to avoid genuine transparency and accountability for operational failures. It was a PR document, not a post-mortem.

  3. On the Mobile App: This is the most revealing part of your response.

    • Lukas wrote: “Not sure I understand what you mean there, as I still use the mobile app regularly without any issues?”

    • Rahul’s response then states: “Mobile is not going away. In fact, we’re doubling down. We’re launching a new cross-platform app on stronger foundations…The first release will focus on secure signing, and we’re targeting early October.”

    This blatant contradiction is the entire problem in a nutshell. One of you is entirely unaware of a major product deprecation that has left users confused for months, while the other confirms it’s happening. How can users trust you to secure their assets when the team isn’t even internally aligned on which products are being supported or shut down?

    To understand what your users have been experiencing, I suggest you read your own support channels. This has been a known issue for nearly a year: https://github.com/5afe/safe-support/issues/547 and IS THIS PROJECT OBSOLETE? · Issue #3455 · safe-global/safe-ios · GitHub

  4. On “Evolving Strategy”: Describing a history of abandoned projects (Safenet, Safe{Core}) as “strategic pivots” is a generous reframing of a lack of follow-through. Now you are introducing new marketing terms like “Cypherprise” and “Safe Shield.” These are meaningless buzzwords. Users don’t need buzzwords; they need a stable, secure product and a coherent roadmap that survives more than two quarters.

  5. On a Pattern of Irresponsible Communication: This brings up the most fundamental issue: your communication philosophy is entirely one-sided. You have a public token and owe a duty of transparency to your ecosystem. You are loud when you have something to announce—a token launch, a new project—because it generates positive publicity. But when a product is deprecated, a roadmap is abandoned, downtime or a security incident occurs, you are silent.

    This isn’t just poor communication; it is a profound irresponsibility to:

    • The community that holds your token and makes decisions based on the information you provide.

    • The builders who invest capital and time developing on a platform they assume is stable.

    • The customers who rely on your infrastructure for critical treasury management.

    The fact that you only address these issues after a public confrontation proves the point. Responsible leaders communicate proactively, especially with bad news. You communicate reactively only when your hand is forced.

Your offer for a private call is appreciated, but misses the point. The issues are public, and the accountability should be as well. These responses have only solidified my concerns.

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I’ll try to limit my response to some key parts I fundamentally disagree with. As mentioned, happy to go into detail in a call, but don’t feel like doing lengthy responses and back-and-forths. Particularly as nowadasy it’s even hard for me to know if I’m effectively arguing with an LLM (not saying this is the case here).

On the Mobile App: This is the most revealing part of your response.

  • Lukas wrote: “Not sure I understand what you mean there, as I still use the mobile app regularly without any issues?”

  • Rahul’s response then states: “Mobile is not going away. In fact, we’re doubling down. We’re launching a new cross-platform app on stronger foundations…The first release will focus on secure signing, and we’re targeting early October.”

This blatant contradiction is the entire problem in a nutshell.

Sorry, this is not a contradiction. I am using the current mobile app as part of my regular signing process and it is NOT shut down. Still, as Rahul points out, there is development on a new cross-platform app, which will eventually be able to replace the current app. But of course this requires a period for migration as you rightfully ask for. I wasn’t aware of the bug that you mentioned, and am sorry if this affected you. Here there is definitely a judgement call by the team needed where bugs are critical engouh to be fixed and where the “fix” will effectively as part of the new app. This imo depends strongly if the functionality that is broken can still be accessed otherwise (e.g. via the web application) even if this is of course inconvinient.

On the Bybit Post-Mortem: (…)
Leaders like CZ of Binance publicly called it out for being a non-explanation.

I assume you are referring to this tweet from CZ: https://x.com/cz_binance/status/1894787596443885698

This tweet was referencing an initial confirmation of an indication of compromise: https://x.com/safe/status/1894768522720350673

But it was not yet the post-mortem / investigation findings which were actually posted a few days after CZ’s tweet: https://x.com/safe/status/1897663514975649938

As mentioned, there have definitely been learnings on comms, but would still be good to stick to the facts as here CZ was NOT referencing the post-mortem actually.

But when a product is deprecated, a roadmap is abandoned, downtime or a security incident occurs, you are silent.

Just few examples where there was communication on things like this recently:

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Frankly, perhaps your team should try using an LLM. Given the reactive communication and strategic chaos, I’m confident it would do a better job of running the project.

Here’s a free consultation to get you started: paste your Bybit post-mortem into any modern AI tool and ask it a simple prompt like, “Critique this report for technical depth, transparency, and its effectiveness in restoring user trust.”

I suspect the output would be more insightful than this exchange has been.

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Finally, someone is speaking out again.

Honestly, it’s hard to imagine that the development of Safe, an infrastructure that protects hundreds of billions of assets and has such widespread usage, would be in its current state.

As early as 2024, many people raised criticism, but at the time, no community members responded. The team members were probably still enjoying the free $SAFE tokens. But their time to enjoy it is running out. $SAFE has fallen by over 90% and is likely to fall another 90%, and their $100 million in funding is almost gone.

As a stakeholder, I’m optimistic about Safe’s future, so I hold $SAFE and actively participate in governance.

I read nearly every post on the Safe forum, check the Safe Discord twice a week, and subscribe to Safe’s Twitter feed. However, the performance over the past year has been truly disappointing.

There’s been virtually no meaningful DAO governance, virtually no community-driven proposals have been advanced, and no substantial product updates.

People always say, “We’re not focused on short-term token prices; we’re just building.”

But in reality, the SAFE team’s building efforts are also astonishing. Their output is even less than that of a small team of 3-5 people in the US, China, or even India.

All of this suggests that the team seems to be slacking off with high salaries and free tokens, with DAO governance in vain.

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