Venture firm Greenfield has filed a regulatory complaint in Switzerland against the Safe Ecosystem Foundation, escalating a governance dispute over the foundation that stewards Safe, the smart-account infrastructure best known for its role in multisig wallet deployments across Ethereum and other chains.

The complaint, first reported by The Defiant, centers on the composition of the foundation's board. Greenfield says it repeatedly asked the Safe Ecosystem Foundation to remove Gnosis co-founder Stefan George from the board and to appoint independent members. According to the investor, the foundation rejected every request, prompting the move to Swiss regulators.

What does the complaint actually allege?

Greenfield's core argument is procedural rather than technical. The firm contends that a foundation domiciled in Switzerland — a jurisdiction that markets itself on institutional-grade legal structures for crypto projects — should not have a board whose independence is compromised by overlapping founding interests. Stefan George co-founded Gnosis, the Ethereum infrastructure company from which Safe originally spun out, and Greenfield argues that this connection is incompatible with a neutral governance role at the foundation.

The investor's proposed remedy was straightforward: remove George from the board and bring in independent directors. Greenfield says those requests were made and rejected, leaving regulatory complaint as the remaining avenue.

Why does foundation governance matter here?

Safe operates as decentralized infrastructure, but its legal and operational wrapper remains a Swiss foundation. That structure carries obligations under Swiss foundation law, which requires foundations to pursue their stated purpose and imposes supervisory oversight depending on the canton of registration. A complaint filed with Swiss authorities therefore tests whether the foundation's board composition satisfies those duties.

The operational stakes are tangible. Safe's contracts secure a substantial share of multisig treasury assets across the Ethereum ecosystem, and the foundation controls key decisions around grants, ecosystem development and protocol-level coordination. Board composition directly shapes those decisions. For institutional counterparties, an investor lodging a formal complaint against the foundation's governance introduces a new diligence consideration when they evaluate which entities they route assets through or build on.

The dispute also illustrates a recurring structural tension in crypto: protocols market decentralization while their legal wrappers remain concentrated in small boards often drawn from founding teams. Greenfield's complaint pushes that tension into a formal regulatory channel rather than leaving it to community forums.

For Gnosis, the complaint adds friction to its relationship with a spinout it helped create. For the Safe Ecosystem Foundation, it signals that at least one professional investor considers current governance deficient enough to warrant regulator attention — a position other backers may weigh.

What happens next?

Swiss regulatory review of foundation complaints does not follow a fixed public timetable, and the outcome could range from dismissal to supervisory engagement with the foundation. Either way, the filing puts the Safe Ecosystem Foundation's board structure under formal scrutiny, and how it responds — by contesting the complaint, adding independent directors, or defending George's position — will shape how the project's governance is perceived by institutional users going forward.