Safe Ecosystem Foundation named Rahul Rumalla chief executive of Safe Labs on June 5, 20251. The new commercial subsidiary runs the self-custody wallet's enterprise push. Rumalla had served as Chief Product Officer at Core Contributors, the studio Safe had used for outside development work. CoinDesk reported on June 11, 2025 that Safe Labs would absorb that outsourced work. Rumalla called the old setup common across crypto2.
Two leadership moves at the Safe Foundation on the record since 2025
Every move CryptoLately has verified there, by the day it became public
Moves: The Moves Ledger, CryptoLately's record of verified leadership moves, Oct. 3, 2016 to Oct. 2, 2026.
Read the chart as a table
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| April 16, 2025 | Layoffs. Layoffs at the Safe Foundation became public |
| June 5, 2025 | Rumalla became CEO, Safe Labs. Rahul Rumalla was named Chief Executive Officer, Safe Labs of the Safe Foundation |
59 executive hires on the record in 2025, the most of any year
Executive hires CryptoLately has verified, by year; 2026 through Oct. 2, 2026
- 2025: 59
- 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, 2026
Moves: The Moves Ledger, CryptoLately's record of verified leadership moves, Oct. 3, 2016 to Oct. 2, 2026.
Read the chart as a table
| Item | Value |
|---|---|
| 2019 | 11 |
| 2020 | 12 |
| 2021 | 27 |
| 2022 | 37 |
| 2023 | 20 |
| 2024 | 39 |
| 2025 | 59 |
| 2026 | 45 |
The move
Lukas Schor, Safe's co-founder and president of the Safe Ecosystem Foundation, explained why the subsidiary existed. “The future of Web3 depends on giving users absolute confidence in their digital sovereignty. With Safe Labs, we're building the infrastructure to make that possible, enterprise-grade, secure, and intuitive by design,” he said in the foundation's announcement1. Rumalla framed his own mandate in the same post. “Ethereum will host trillion-dollar economies powered by Safe. We achieve this by delivering enterprise-grade products that remain accessible to everyone. This is our challenge, our vision, and our ambition,” he said.
Rumalla told CoinDesk the shift answered a tradeoff Safe wanted to stop accepting. “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 said2. Safe Labs would "step back" from that framework instead of picking a side, he added.
Safe before and after Safe Labs
Rumalla joined the Safe ecosystem in July 2024 as vice president of product and engineering, with 15 years in the field1. He had founded two Web3 firms, Paperchain and Otterspace. Before that, he ran product at SoundCloud. CoinDesk linked the restructuring to February's $1.43 billion Bybit hack, the largest crypto theft on record2. A North Korea-linked group pulled it off. The group compromised a Safe developer's machine while leaving Safe's smart contracts untouched, the outlet reported. Rumalla called the breach a "catalyst" for the new unit and said Safe's own values, including anonymity and open-source transparency, had been "used against us". Despite the hack, he told CoinDesk the wallet saw "practically no churn" and still processed 10 percent of transaction volume across Ethereum-compatible networks.
What came next
Safe Labs kept Rumalla at its head through at least May 25, 2026, when a suspected exploit of a third-party wallet module drained roughly $3.2 million from 86 Safe accounts3. Rumalla told Cointelegraph the affected accounts "do not seem to be operated on official Safe Wallet product". He pointed to Safe Shield, a risk-detection feature. Safe Shield had already flagged the exploited module as malicious, he said. Nearly a year after Safe Labs launched on June 5, 2025, Rumalla was still the executive speaking for it.
Sources
- Lukas Schor, "Self-Custody Giant Safe Unveils Safe Labs: Names Rahul Rumalla CEO," Safe Ecosystem Foundation, June 5, 2025, https://safefoundation.org/blog/safe-labs-launch-rahul-rumalla-ceo
- Sam Kessler, "Safe Establishes New Development Firm to Attract Institutions and Tackle Crypto's 'Cyber Warfare' Era," CoinDesk, June 11, 2025, https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2025/06/11/safe-establishes-new-development-firm-to-attract-institutions-and-tackle-cryptos-cyber-warfare-era
- Cointelegraph, "Squid and Safe Labs say third-party module behind $3.2M exploit," Bitget News, May 25, 2026, https://www.bitget.com/news/detail/12560605427486