Key Insights
- Total volume processed hit an all-time high of over $112 billion in Q4’24, up 46% QoQ. Ethereum led the way hitting an all-time high of $77.7 billion, up 22% QoQ.
- Safe quarterly transactions hit an all-time high of over 87 million in Q4’24, up 306% QoQ. World Chain accounted for nearly 81% of these transactions.
- Safe set back-to-back monthly ATHs in DEX volume with $1.5 billion traded in November and $2.2 billion in December 2024. These two record-breaking months led to an ATH of $4.8 billion in quarterly DEX volume as well, up 49% QoQ.
- In Q4’24, World Chain accounted for 92% of Safe’s daily active users and 64% of all newly created accounts. In contrast, Ethereum accounted for over 70% of the total volume processed and 87% of assets stored in Safes in Q4’24.
- Safe announced Safenet, a payment processing network that allows for nearly instant cross-chain asset transfers between Safe smart accounts.
Primer
As of Q4’24 close, over $95 billion of assets were secured in 30+ million deployed smart accounts, making Safe one of the go-to solutions for smart contract wallets. Safe, previously Gnosis Safe, aims to create the standard for ownership with smart accounts.
Safe is largely used as a multi-sig wallet. It enables individuals to securely self-custody their funds and organizations to manage their treasury operations effectively. As per Messari’s wallet landscape analysis, Safe is a wallet infrastructure aggregator, in addition to offering smart contract wallets, namely:
- Safe{Wallet}: Main product in the form of a smart wallet solution (i.e., Safe’s user-facing smart contract wallet),
- Safe{Core}: Infrastructure protocol that powers both Safe’s wallet solutions and other projects (e.g., Worldcoin),
- Safe{Foundry}: Open source initiative on account and chain abstraction.
- Safenet: An unreleased payment processing network that allows for the quick and seamless transfer of assets stored in Safe smart accounts between blockchains.
The Safe community voted to make the SAFE token transferable in Q2’24. In Q3’24, Safe launched community-aligned fees for native swaps as the first integration within Safe{Wallet} to facilitate revenue generation for SafeDAO.
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Key Metrics
Performance Analysis
Network Analysis
The usage of Safe can be gauged in terms of account and transaction activity across Safe’s multiple deployments. As of Q4’24, Safe has been deployed on 15+ networks, including, Arbitrum, Avalanche, Base, Blast, BNB Chain, Celo, Ethereum, Fantom, Gnosis Chain, Linea, Mante, OP Mainnet, Polygon, Polygon zkEVM, Scroll, Worldchain, and ZKsync.
New Safes
Nearly 10.3 million Safe smart accounts were newly created in Q4’24, down 29% QoQ from 14.5 million in Q3’24. The Safe{Core} smart account infrastructure was deployed on the World Chain in Q3’24 and corresponded to over 13.3 million new Safe smart accounts being created on World Chain, which represented 92% of all the new Safe smart accounts in Q3’24. This quarter saw a similar trend, where 64% of new Safe smart accounts were created on World Chain. This culminated in 6.6 million Safe smart accounts being deployed on World Chain, a 51% QoQ decrease.
Copilot Insights: What is World Chain?
However, the trends are quite different on OP Mainnet and Polygon, with new Safe smart accounts experiencing a QoQ rise of 233% and 243%, respectively. Before the launch of World Chain, Worldcoin migrated from Polygon to Optimism’s ecosystem via OP Mainnet in Q2’23. In Q4’24, 2.9 million new Safe smart accounts were created on OP Mainnet, accounting for 29% of all new Safe smart accounts, second only to World Chain. The rise in new Safe smart accounts on both World Chain and Optimism can be largely attributed to the creation of new World IDs, making World App one of the first applications leveraging Safe smart accounts at scale.
After strong growth in new Safes in Q4’24, the total number of Safe smart accounts created passed the 30 million milestone this quarter. Roughly, 19.9 million Safe smart accounts have been created on World Chain, representing 58% of the 34.5 million Safe smart accounts in total.
Active Safes
Daily active users (DAUs) are Safe smart accounts that perform one outbound transaction per day. The 30-day moving average of DAUs allows for the identification of Safe’s usage trend over approximately the last month. At Q4’s close, the 30-day average of DAUs had hit an all-time high of 585,300 users per day, up 235% QoQ. Over 536,800 of these DAUs were using World Chain, representing 92% of the total 30-day DAU average in Q4’24. Furthermore, OP Mainnet, and Polygon accounted for over 23,900 (4%) and 19,800 (3%) weekly active users in Q4’24, respectively.
Transactions & Adoption
Safe smart account monthly transactions have been steadily rising since the beginning of 2024, but picked up growth in Q4’24 with the release of World Chain by World (previously Worldcoin). World App uses a Safe smart account at its core to allow World App users to interact onchain. Originally, the World App allowed users to interact on Polygon, then migrated to OP Mainnet, and now it allows users to interact on World Chain. The World App isn’t a standard wallet like MetaMask, it allows users to hold their World ID, which is World’s unique identifier for humans. Holders of a World ID are afforded free transactions on World Chain via the World App. This is part of the reason that Safe smart account transactions increased 306% QoQ, rising from 21.5 million to 87.1 million in Q4. Safe’s smart account adoption rate is the proportion of Safe transactions across all supported networks relative to all transactions across all supported networks. Safe’s adoption rate grew 235% QoQ, rising from 1.3% in Q3’24 to closing Q4’24 at 4.5%.
Financial Analysis
Total Value Secured
One of the most important metrics to gauge the state of Safe is that of total value secured (TVS). Safe’s TVS is the dollar value of all the tokens stored in Safe smart accounts. In Q4, TVS rose 38% QoQ, moving from $70.2 billion in Q3’24 to over $97.1 billion in Q4’24. Over the last year, TVS has risen from $65.1 billion in Q4’23 by $31.9 billion, representing 49% YoY growth.
In terms of distribution by chains, Ethereum led the way with $84.5 billion (87%) of assets stored on Safe smart accounts, followed by OP Mainnet with $4.2 billion (4%), and BNB Chain with $3.3 billion (3%).
Total Volume Processed
Total volume processed (TVP) for Safe smart accounts represents the dollar value of fungible assets sent to and from Safe smart accounts. Unfortunately, at the time of writing, TVP data for World Chain was not yet available. In Q4’24, TVP increased 46% QoQ, rising from $76.7 billion in Q3 to closing Q4 at $111.6 billion. This quarter, TVP inked both a quarterly all-time high (ATH) and a monthly ATH hitting $47.5 billion in December 2024.
Once again, Ethereum lead the way with $77.7 billion (70%) of assets stored on Safe smart accounts. However, the subsequent leaders in TVP are Polygon with $11.4 billion (10%) and Base with $9.3 billion (8%). Both Polygon and Base saw their respective TVPs rise by hundreds of percent QoQ, rising 290% and 944%, respectively.
DEX Volume
Safe smart accounts traded $4.7 billion through DEXes in Q4’24, up 49% QoQ from $3.2 billion in Q3’24. Notably, in Q4’24 Safe smart accounts set back-to-back monthly ATHs in DEX volume, with $1.5 billion traded in November and $2.2 billion in December 2024. These two record-breaking months led to an ATH in quarterly DEX volume as well.
Unsurprisingly, Ethereum is the DEX volume leader corresponding to 77% of all DEX volume in Q4’24. Arbitrum, Base, and Polygon all experienced triple-digit growth in their DEX volume but only represented 7%, 6%, and 6% of all DEX volume from Safe smart accounts, respectively.
Fees
Fees from native swaps were up 57% QoQ, rising from $373,300 in Q3 to closing out Q4 at $587,200. This was achieved via Safe smart accounts swapping $250 million in Q3 and $394 million in Q4 through the native swaps feature, which uses CoW Protocol to execute the trades. For context, in Q3’24, the SafeDAO approved the first revenue stream for SafeDAO in the form of community-aligned fees using a license model. Safe launched community-aligned fees for native swaps as the first integration within Safe{Wallet} to facilitate revenue generation for SafeDAO. For token pairs excluding stablecoin-only pairs, the swap fees that contribute to the Safe community-aligned fees are as follows:
- 0.35%: for trade size between $0 – $100,000;
- 0.20%: for trade size between $100,000 – $1,000,000;
- 0.10%: for trade size above $1,000,000.
For stablecoin-only pairs, the fees are:
- 0.10%: for trade size between $0 – $100,000;
- 0.07%: for trade size between $100,000 – $1,000,000;
- 0.05%: for trade size above $1,000,000.
Further revenue streams, such as native staking, are expected to be launched in the future.
Copilot Insights: What is CoW Protocol?
Market Cap
Since enabling transfers of the SAFE token in Q2’24, the circulating market capitalization of SAFE has been in a downtrend. However, this trend pivoted in Q4, with SAFE’s circulating market cap increasing 13% QoQ, rising from $457.2 million to close Q4 at $514.6 million.
That said, SAFE’s market cap amongst all tokens fell 27 spots from 137 to 164, underperforming similarly priced cryptoassets. The price of SAFE also rose this quarter, increasing 4% QoQ from $0.96 to $1.00.
Qualitative Analysis
Key Developments
Safenet
On December 3, 2024, Safe Ecosystem Foundation announced Safenet, an intent-based transaction processing network designed to scale DeFi by enabling instant and secure cross-chain transactions. Safenet will operate on top of existing and future blockchains and disintermediate transaction execution from transaction settlement, similar to how Visa’s payment processing network (VisaNet) operates in traditional finance.
Safenet’s architecture will center around Safenet Processors and the Safenet Liquidity Network. Safenet Processors secure asset availability by issuing resource locks on user accounts and executing transactions instantly using external liquidity. They guarantee execution through rigorous security checks and adherence to user-defined policies, settling transactions with validity proofs. These functions are supported by the Safenet Liquidity Network, which aggregates liquidity from various DeFi primitives like DEXs and lending markets, alongside other liquidity sources to enable seamless transaction execution.
The Safenet Processor Network will drive onchain innovation by facilitating novel business models, including off-exchange settlement, NFT loans with partial down payments, and recurring subscription payments. By enabling users to maintain self-custody of assets while executing offchain transactions that are periodically settled onchain, locking NFTs as collateral for loans, and triggering scheduled payments, processors will support these functions and generate revenue through diverse fee structures. Capitalizing on high transfer volumes and Safe Smart Account adoption, the Safenet Processor Network will foster a new onchain economy.
The Decentralized Validator Network strengthens Safenet’s security by employing SAFE validators to oversee processor activity and initiate challenges for transactions that are non-compliant or malicious. Safenet Processors are also required to stake SAFE, in proportion to their transfer volumes, to engage in the ecosystem. This framework aims to align incentives and guarantee that the network remains secure, scalable, and decentralized. The alpha version of Safenet is slated for release in early 2025.
Integrations with Mantle, Sonic, and Ink
In Q4’24, Safe announced the integration of Safe{Core} and Safe{Wallet} multisig with Mantle, Sonic, and Ink. The Safe{Core} stack offers developers a robust framework for building advanced smart contract wallets and decentralized applications (dApps). These deployments aim to make account abstraction more accessible and versatile across the blockchain ecosystem.
Closing Summary
While most smart contract wallets have struggled to find mainstream adoption, Safe has continued to be an exception. As the leading smart contract wallet system, Safe stored nearly $96 billion of assets in its smart contract wallets in Q4 and processed over $111 billion in transfer volume. Safe smart accounts performed just under $5 billion in DEX swaps this quarter, with SafeDAO earning $587k from native swaps through their execution partner CoW Protocol.
Safe witnessed an all-time high of over 87 million transactions in Q4’24, up 306% QoQ. The vast majority of these transactions occurred on World Chain, which was also responsible for the majority of over 10 million new Safes deployed in Q4’24. Safe smart account users on World Chain represented 92% of the 585,300 total 30-day average DAU in Q4’24.
Safenet was announced this quarter which aims to link Safe smart accounts together across all new and existing blockchains. Safenet, in conjunction with increased adoption of Safe’s wallet and its infrastructure, will only further advance Safe’s goal to bring the global economy on-chain.
