Safe Labs Launches to Reinvent Self-Custody for Enterprises on Ethereum

Safe, formerly Gnosis Safe, has launched a new commercial subsidiary—Safe Labs—dedicated to developing enterprise-grade self-custody wallets for Ethereum. The move marks a strategic effort to meet growing institutional demand for secure and customizable crypto asset management solutions.

Announced on June 5, Safe Labs is wholly owned by Safe and will leverage its Smart Accounts infrastructure, a modular system based on smart contracts. The goal: provide secure, intuitive custody products tailored for businesses holding or exposing users to onchain assets. “The future of Web3 depends on giving users absolute confidence in their digital sovereignty,” said Lukas Schor, co-founder of Safe and president of its foundation.

Leading Safe Labs is Rahul Rumalla, previously chief product officer at Safe. With over 15 years in product and engineering, including stints at SoundCloud and Web3 startups like Otterspace, Rumalla brings seasoned leadership to the new unit. He emphasized that many institutions are already using Safe’s solutions and that Safe Labs will allow the company to “build a more opinionated product” for enterprise clients.

Safe currently secures over $60 billion in assets, facilitates 4% of all Ethereum transactions, and powers approximately 10% of the Ethereum Virtual Machine’s smart account market.

Yet, self-custody at the institutional level remains a complex challenge—particularly with issues like blind signing, where users approve transactions without being able to fully verify them on hardware wallets. Blind signing has led to major security incidents, including the $1.4 billion Bybit hack in February, attributed to compromised developer machines and opaque transaction approval processes within Safe’s suite.

While Safe’s Smart Accounts architecture supports multisignature workflows, it doesn’t yet fully resolve blind signing vulnerabilities. Solutions may lie in stronger collaborations between multisig platforms and hardware wallet makers like Ledger and Trezor. “It’s like signing blank checks online,” Ledger CEO Pascal Gauthier noted, underscoring the risks.

As self-custody becomes more critical in crypto’s institutional future, Safe Labs’ work could reshape the infrastructure landscape, balancing usability and sovereignty. The evolution of these tools will likely set new standards for how businesses interact with Web3 securely.