World Liberty Financial (a DeFi platform associated with the Trump family) and the Ethereum Foundation (the largest group of Ethereum developers) have revealed the wallet they use to create and manage their cryptocurrency reserves.  

This one is called Safe, and it works as a multi-signature wallet that supports over 15 cryptocurrency networks; including second layers like Base, Optimism, Polygon zkEVM, Zk Sync Era or Arbitrum, and first layers like Ethereum, Polygon, BNB Chain, and Avalanche.  

According to Safe's website, this wallet solution is also used by protocols such as Chainlink, Aave, Starknet, and Ethereum Name Service (ENS), making it one of the most popular wallets around in Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM)-based ecosystems right now. 

Safe has some interesting credentials. Now, what motivates such big players to create their reserves in this multi-signature wallet solution? Let’s test the Safe wallet to find out. 

An easy wallet to migrate existing accounts 

On the one hand, Safe is used as a hot wallet port. This means that it allows you to import and connect existing wallets from solutions such as MetaMask, Phantom, Ledger, Trezor and Coinbase Wallet to manage them from its interface, which provides them with additional functionalities that they would not normally have.  

For example, Safe allows you to use an existing MetaMask account and configure it to work as a multi-signature wallet . This configuration allows you to add a wallet name, number of signers, manually including the addresses of the other account holders, and a threshold of signatures required to approve executions with it (1 of 2, 2 of 2, 2 of 3, 2 of 4, 3 of 5, any configuration is possible).  

Modern multisig wallet with flat hierarchy 

Safe's multisig works on a flat hierarchy: each signer has equal rights within the account. On top of this, it has a facility for other people related to the holders to propose transactions whose execution depends on the primary signers agreeing to sign them. It also enables the setting of spending limits and time locks for certain accounts. Additionally, Safe's account settings allow the number of signers and the threshold of signatures required to execute transactions to be changed on the fly. 

While you configure the number of signers and the signature threshold, the platform provides data and advice on how to successfully configure the wallet. During the first stages of the user experience, Safe appears to be a light and fluid solution for transitioning from normal custody to multi-signature custody , both because of the advice on setting up the wallet, which is good, and because it allows you to use your usual personal account, and does not force you to create a new wallet, which entails more work.  

Given the above, it is understandable that such long-standing players in the industry as the Ethereum Foundation chose Safe to create their reserves and finance and extend their operations. It is likely that the wallets of this foundation, which are collectively managed, have been used and created for years; Safe allows for a smooth process of migrating funds to a multi-signature format.  

This smooth migration is enhanced by the fact that Safe works like a modern Ethereum account: it gives access to sponsored fee payments, so the process of activating a Safe account, given that it requires a migration process that can be free. Activating multiple accounts is free initially, in fact, because Safe allows 5 sponsored payments per day. 

Why Safe and not another wallet? 

The question arises: if the Ethereum Foundation wallets were already collectively managed, why did they migrate their accounts? Well, in addition to easy-to-implement multi-signature solutions with pre-existing wallets, Safe is characterized by allowing batch transactions and interaction with multiple decentralized applications (dApps) from the wallet interface. From a Polygon account, there are 58 applications in total, a fairly high number, accessible. Among them, 1inch Network, Aave v3, Dodo, KyberSwap, QuickSwap, Sushi, Uniswap . The aforementioned are natively integrated into Safe, but other dApps can be added manually via URL.  

We know that the Ethereum Foundation is moving its funds to expand its operations in DeFi and find other ways to finance its payrolls and expenses other than selling ethers (ETH), an action that could be affecting the price of the cryptocurrency.  

Given the number of applications available on Safe, it is understandable why this cryptocurrency wallet was chosen by the non-profit organization. Safe offers them, in short, a light migration process and a good number of applications to increase the performance of their treasuries without depending on the sale of ethers.  

For its part, World Liberty Financial, the Trump family-backed platform that processes over $46,000,000 in an institutional Safe account, has reportedly found good reasons to deposit its funds in this wallet. Given Trump’s focus on altcoins, it’s understandable that he chose a modern Ethereum wallet with broad access to DeFi.  

Security preferences will also have played a role: SafeWallet offers several social account recovery services . One of them is centralized, offered by a third party, using camera-based identity recognition. In this case, by Signum, a bank regulated in Switzerland.