$SAFE is the ERC20 governance token of SafeDAO, a DAO formed by digital asset management platform called Safe (formerly known as Gnosis Safe).
Gnosis Safe is a digital asset management product developed by a centralized company called Gnosis Ltd (CEO, Martin Köppelmann). It is also used by many crypto projects, storing near $300b asset value.
After GnosisDAO's GIP 29 proposal, a proposal aims to spin-off the Gnosis Safe from Gnosis Ltd, SafeDAO was founded and $SAFE is the governance token of SafeDAO.
According to GIP 29, the SAFE Token will be used to govern and curate essential infrastructure components of the Safe ecosystem, including:
Safe Protocol
- Safe Deployments (core smart contract deployments across multiple networks)
- Curation of “trusted lists” (Token lists, dApp lists, module lists)
Interfaces
- Decentralized hosting of a Safe frontend using the safe.eth domain
- Decentralized hosting of governance frontends
On-chain assets
- ENS names
- Outstanding SAFE Token supply
- Other Safe Treasury assets (NFTs, tokens, etc.)
Tokenomics
- Ecosystem reward programs
- User rewards
- Value capture
- Future token utility
By giving control over the core components of the Safe ecosystem to the SAFE Token holders, the SafeDAO is enabled to introduce value capture and reward programs that supercharge the Gnosis Safe ecosystem flywheel. Important: The visualisation does not constitute the tokenomics, but rather just showcases areas where token mechanisms can be implemented.
The following key facts of Safe Token ($SAFE) distribution are extracted and cited from SafeDAO's SAFE Voting Power and Circulating Supply proposals
User: 5%
- Purpose: Active users of Safe should become key stakeholders of the SafeDAO governance, proportional to their past activity. This is the distribution that is currently actively being discussed in this proposal 137.
- Distribution: 25M tokens (2.5% of supply) are available right away, another 25M tokens will be vested over 4 years.
- Voting rights: Vested and unvested tokens can be used for voting.
Ecosystem (Guardians): 5%
- Purpose: Besides users, also external contributors are key stakeholders. This includes people actively contributing to our open source components and project teams building their own solution on top of Safe as well as other (non-code) contributions to the Safe Ecosystem.
- Distribution: An initial airdrop distributes 25M tokens (12.5M Tokens available right away, another 12.5M tokens vested over 4 years). The remaining 25M tokens will be distributed using future Guardians programs coordinated via SafeDAO.
- Voting rights: Vested and unvested tokens can be used for voting.
Strategic Raise (Backers): 8%
- Purpose: In order to align key strategic partners and industry experts, a strategic funding round 27 was conducted earlier this year.
- Distribution: 80M tokens (8% of supply) are vested amongst the 60+ backers over 4 years with an initial lockup of 1 year. Vesting start date is July 8th. So the initial lockup ends on July 8th, 2023.
- Voting rights: Vested and unvested tokens can be used for voting.
Core Contributors: 15%
- Purpose: Reward key contributors and align them long-term. Get the best talent to join the project.
- Distribution: 100M tokens (10% of supply) are already allocated to 40+ core contributors, the remaining 50M tokens (5% of supply) is reserved for future core contributors. Tokens are generally vested over 4 years. It is expected that the full 150M tokens are vested by 2030. For the key roles in the project, the token vesting is backloaded. Meaning that these people get very little in the initial years contributing and only get the majority of the tokens if they really end up being part of the project for at least 4 years.
- Voting rights: Vested and unvested tokens can be used for voting.
Safe Foundation: 7%
- Purpose: The Safe Foundation fosters the Safe Ecosystem. It uses its allocation for ecosystem rewards and general ecosystem building activities that require a legal entity as a counter-party.
- Distribution: Vested over 4 years. Vesting start date is April 20 (token generation date), with 20M tokens (2% of supply) available right away.
- Voting rights: No (technically yes, but commits to not use their share for voting purposes).
SafeDAO Treasury: 40%
- Purpose: The main SafeDAO treasury can be used to facilitate further distributions of SAFE.
- Distribution: 400M SAFE (40% of supply) is vested to the SafeDAO treasury over 8 years, of which 50M are available right away. Vesting start date is the day of the SafeDAO initiation.
- Voting rights: No
GnosisDAO Treasury: 15%
- Purpose: Next to being the initial founder and funder of Safe, Gnosis remains an important stakeholder and partner in the future. This is further guaranteed by having GnosisDAO being a significant holder of SAFE Tokens.
- Distribution: 150M SAFE (15% of supply) is vested to GnosisDAO over 4 years, of which 10M are available right away. Vesting start date is May 1st.
- Voting rights: Only vested tokens can be used for voting (see GIP-29) 14
Joint Treasury (GnosisDAO <> SafeDAO): 5%
- Purpose: This allocation is an experiment in DAO coordination, as it is an amount of tokens that is collectively governed by two DAOs, the SafeDAO and GnosisDAO (imagine a 2-out-of-2 Multisig between those two DAOs).
- Distribution: 50M tokens are available right away for the joint SafeDAO<>GnosisDAO treasury.
- Voting rights: No
Safe (formerly Gnosis Safe) focuses on solving the security and usability of digital assets. Safe provides a way for an individual or group to secure their digital assets without the single point of failure that is one private key and one seed phrase.
At its core, Safe is a programmable ownership platform that enables secure management of digital assets, data and identity, through its multi-signature capabilities. The open source contracts are battle-tested and there have been no critical security incidents since Safe was deployed in 2018.
