Safe, the popular multiparty crypto wallet previously called Gnosis Safe, has launched a new development unit, Safe Labs, in a move aimed at consolidating its operations and sharpening its product roadmap after it was targeted in February’s $1.4 billion ByBit hack — the largest crypto heist to date.

The new entity will serve as the core development arm of Safe, which until now had outsourced technical work to a separate development firm, a structure commonly used across the crypto industry, Safe Labs Chief Executive Rahul Rumalla said on Wednesday. Safe Labs will operate directly under the umbrella of the Safe Foundation, a nonprofit organization.

In an interview with CoinDesk, Rumalla said the transition reflects a broader strategy shift toward building products that can meet both the ideological standards of cypherpunk culture and the practical demands of enterprise clients.

“This framework that we are forced to operate in — it actually forces you to compromise one over the other: If you want more security, you have to compromise on convenience, and if you want more convenience, you compromise on security,” Rumalla said.

“We at Safe Labs, we step back and we reject this framework. We don’t want to operate in this model where we have to compromise one over the other.”

Post-Hack Pivot

According to Rumalla, the ByBit hack was a “catalyst” for the creation of Safe Labs.

While Safe’s core smart contracts remained uncompromised, its user-facing web application was infiltrated with malicious code by North Korea’s Lazarus Group. That attack enabled the hackers to trick ByBit’s CEO into signing off on a transaction that rerouted funds into their control.

“What we saw with an attack like this is that our core values were used against us,” Rumalla said. “Anonymity, privacy, self-custody, transparency, open source — these were used against us.”

Despite the breach, Rumalla said user confidence in the Safe platform remained strong. The application saw “practically no churn” in the aftermath and continues to process 10% of all transaction volume across Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM)-compatible networks.

“We’re not defending against cyberattacks,” Rumalla said. “We are defending cyber warfare, and that requires a mindset shift — not just at the project level, not at the company level, but as Ethereum or even crypto as a whole.”

From Ideals to Infrastructure

The move to formalize internal development echoes similar shifts by other major protocols, including Morpho and Polygon, which have both recently made moves to streamline decision-making and improve accountability with more traditional organizational structures.

In parallel, Safe Labs is also refocusing on product design. The team is currently working on a “V2” version of its wallet, which Rumalla described as more “opinionated” — meaning bolder product direction, particularly for institutional users.

“What we’re going to be launching and testing in the future is a subscription plan, essentially, that’s called Safe Pro — or Safe for enterprises, Safe for institutions — very much around that realm,” he said. “We’re going to basically package this opinionated product that’s more for the user segments that have higher security needs and more customization appetite.”

“We need to operate at startup speed,” Rumalla added. «That in itself is the premise of why we need to operate as a separate, independent entity. We need to align where we need to align, which is on the mission, but we need to be a bit more independent in terms of how we execute.»

With more than $60 billion in total value locked and over $1 trillion in historical transaction volume, according to Rumalla, Safe remains one of crypto’s most battle-tested self-custody platforms. The team, now roughly 40 strong and based in Berlin, is betting that its next chapter — one that embraces opinionated product design without sacrificing its open-source ethos — will help define how wallets look in a world heading toward a trillion-dollar on-chain economy.

«Our mission is simple: making self custody easy and secure,» Rumalla said. «That’s a win for everybody.»

The recent wave of companies adding bitcoin to their balance sheets has not yielded universally positive results. Semler Scientific (SMLR), a medical technology firm that pivoted into bitcoin treasury strategy, has seen its stock fall over nearly 50% in 2025 to nearly the level it was at a bit more than one year ago when it first began to accumulate BTC.

The company’s premium to its net asset value (NAV), often referred to as multiple-to-NAV (mNAV), has dropped below 1x. On a basic share count basis, its market cap sits at approximately $420 million compared to bitcoin holdings valued around $491 million (4,449 BTC), putting its NAV ratio at just 0.859x, according to Strategy-Tracker.

The mNAV being below 1.0 is crucial as Semler’s main mechanism for accumulating bitcoin is to raise capital via share sales. However, for the share sale strategy to be accretive to shareholders, the stock must trade at a premium to the value of the company’s bitcoin holdings. With the share price at or below NAV, issuing new shares would dilute existing shareholders without adding proportional value, effectively halting the company’s ability to pursue further bitcoin accumulation under the current strategy.

Bitcoin bull Tom Lee, Head of Research at Fundstrat, however, views Semler Scientific as an opportunity in his firm’s «Granny shot» research portfolio. Granny shot refers to an unconventional way of shooting free throws in basketball and Fundstrat’s Granny Shot (GRNY) portfolio is meant to emphasize the firm’s unusual approach to research.

The U.S. Senate took the initial steps toward final approval of its first major crypto legislation as members opened voting Wednesday on the bill to set standards for U.S. stablecoin issuers, clearing the highest procedural hurdle with a 68-30 result.

In a moment that will mark the industry’s greatest U.S. policy success to-date, the famously slow-moving Senate is on its way to clearing the legislation with wide bipartisan support. And as the crypto world watches the Senate reverse what had long been a crypto-resistant stance, the House of Representatives has also scored a pair of key votes to advance legislation even more vital to the industry: the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act that would establish a full set of rules managing U.S. oversight of the crypto markets.

In the Senate, the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins of 2025 (GENIUS) Act is the much-revised bill that had already garnered bipartisan approvals in multiple procedural votes and is now on what’s expected to be an inevitable path Wednesday. The Senate needed to clear the high bar of 60 votes to move to the final vote, which was easily obtained as many Democrats joined Republicans in pushing forward toward stablecoin regulation.

The bill would establish a system under which stablecoins can be issued in the U.S. under the watch of state or federal regulators, and leaving some avenues for non-financial corporations to launch their own coins (a point of criticism from Democrats). Regulating these assets is fundamental to the operations of the crypto markets, in which dollar-based tokens such as Circle’s USDC and Tether’s USDT are routinely used in transactions and contracts.

In the previous congressional session, what was then the Democrat-run Senate Banking Committee stood in the way of advancing crypto legislation, but its current Republican chairman, Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, has become a crypto advocate. The chamber’s overall pro-crypto sentiment has been growing stronger in this session and will be further cemented by Wednesday’s votes.

Before Wednesday’s voting, the GENIUS Act’s sponsor, Senator Bill Hagerty, asked his colleagues for support on the bill.»This would strengthen our fiscal position and cement the dollar’s status as the world’s reserve currency,» Hagerty argued. «If we fail to act now, not only will these benefits slip away, we’ll also fall behind in global competitiveness without a regulatory framework.But Senator Elizabeth Warren, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee, took to the Senate floor to blast the GENIUS Act. «The GENIUS Act lacks the basic safeguards necessary to ensure that stable coins don’t blow up our entire financial system,» the Massachusetts senator said. «The bill permits stablecoin issuers to invest in risky assets and allows them to engage in risky non-stablecoin activities like private credit or derivatives trading.»Warren had a sharp message for fellow members of her party, many of whom were set to support the bill, that they «should show a little spine» and insist that Republicans allow some of the amendments pushed earlier by Democrats.

When the stablecoin bill is forwarded to the House, that leaves key decision in the hands of leaders there, whether to pair the GENIUS Act with the market structure effort, or to pursue it either as a straight-up vote on the Senate’s version or a more complex process of melding the Senate’s language with legislation already in the works in the House. Whatever happens, the House will need to match the Senate’s approval at some point before a stablecoin bill can move to the president’s desk to be signed into law.

While the GENIUS Act advanced, it followed a day of successes for proponents of the Clarity Act in the House, where that bill cleared the House Financial Services Committee and the House Ag Committee with big bipartisan votes in the same day on Tuesday.

Crypto lobbyists in Washington argue alongside their lawmakers allies that both bills are needed to properly regulate the industry in the U.S.