Safe, a leading smart-account provider, reported that $12.4 billion of the $57.64 billion held in its smart accounts at the end of the third quarter was invested in DeFi protocols. This marks the first quarter where Safe included DeFi positions in its asset figures, contributing to a more than doubling of its headline asset total. The increase was also driven by a 66% gain in ETH prices. However, the report did not separate the impact of DeFi positions from the ETH price surge.
Stablecoin balances in Safe accounts grew by 15% to $7.48 billion, while transfer volume increased by 13.7% to $44.75 billion. The number of Safes reached 65.7 million, up 3.7%, across over 400 chains. Notably, Safe smart accounts on Optimism and Base processed more than $11 billion in trading volume, primarily on platforms like Uniswap, Velodrome, and Aerodrome.
The Safe Ecosystem Foundation's treasury outperformed benchmarks, returning 6.6% APY over the quarter against benchmarks of 3.5% to 3.7%. The foundation had about $16.3 million deployed as of Sept. 30, with private credit reaching $4.02 million across two facilities at 8.0% APR. Lukas Schor, co-founder of Safe, emphasized the goal of making self-custody work at scale.
The SAFE token traded at $0.0808, up 0.9% over 24 hours but down 24.1% over seven days. Its market value was about $63.9 million, ranking it 374th. CoinShares recently added managed strategies inside Safe accounts.