Safe, formerly Gnosis Safe, launches Safe Labs to build enterprise self-custody tools using its smart contract wallet tech.
Safe, a crypto self-custody company previously known as Gnosis Safe, has established a subsidiary, Safe Labs, to develop enterprise-grade self-custody solutions.
Safe Labs is a commercial subsidiary wholly owned by the company, as indicated in an announcement shared with Cointelegraph on June 5.
It will concentrate on the development of institutional products through the use of Safe Smart Accounts, a modular wallet system that is founded on smart contracts.
Lukas Schor, co-founder of Safe and president of the Safe Ecosystem Foundation, stated that the future of Web3 is contingent upon ensuring that users have complete confidence in their digital sovereignty.
“We are developing the infrastructure to enable this, which is enterprise-grade, secure, and intuitive by design, in collaboration with Safe Labs.”
Rahul Rumalla, previously the company’s chief product officer, will serve as the leader of the company Labs.
Rumalla has over 15 years of experience in product leadership and engineering.
He has founded Web3 startups Paperchain and Otterspace and previously served as the director of engineering at SoundCloud.
Rumalla informed Cointelegraph that the organization aims to “hold or expose customers to on-chain value.”
Additionally, he stated that “a significant number of enterprises and institutions have been utilizing our services for an extended period.”
He further stated that the new entity would enable the company to “develop a more opinionated product” for its clients.
The company currently secures $60 billion in assets, powers 4% of all Ethereum transactions, and anchors approximately 10% of the Ethereum Virtual Machine smart-account market, according to Rumalla.
Significance Of Self-Custody
Users’ ability to maintain control over their private keys is essential for the protection of crypto assets without the need for third-party custodians.
This is known as self-custody.
In addition, institutional investors frequently implement multi-signature configurations to ensure their security.
In contrast to a single private key, they necessitate multiple private keys to authorize a transaction.
However, many multisignature configurations necessitate blind signing with hardware wallets.
Blind signing is the process of approving a transaction on a hardware wallet without the ability to thoroughly verify its details on the device’s screen.
This is because these transactions frequently employ intricate smart contract logic or custom data formats that the hardware wallet does not inherently support.
This implies that the user must have confidence in the transaction information exhibited by their internet-connected and vulnerable device, typically a computer, before approving a transaction.
In the past, this has resulted in catastrophic and dire repercussions.
A recent example is the $1.4 billion Bybit breach in February, which was attributed to blind signing in the company Suite.
A post-mortem update was also released by the custody provider, which elucidated the root cause of the recent Bybit hack as a compromised developer workstation.
The update was criticized by Changpeng “CZ” Zhao, the co-founder of Binance.
He alleged that the organization neglected to address critical inquiries from the breach and dismissed certain matters instead.
There Is Still Blind Signing
The company’s forthcoming product is predicated on its “Safe Smart Accounts,” a modular smart-contract wallet constructed on the company’s infrastructure.
It enables the administration of multiple signatures; however, blind signing is still required for numerous onchain interactions.
To resolve this matter, hardware wallet manufacturers, including Trezor and Ledger, would likely need to collaborate with developers of multisignature solutions, such as Safe.
Pascal Gauthier, the CEO of Ledger, had previously acknowledged the matter.
“Blind signing is a common practice in the industry; however, it is absurd because it is akin to signing blank checks online,” he stated.
