Safenet Beta Staking UI RFP: Operators Selected
We opened this RFP on April 27 under SEP-55. By the May 17 deadline, SEF received 10 submissions. Six operators are being awarded grants totaling 500,000 SAFE.
Tier structure
Tiers match the deliverable scope, not how much work was done before applying.
Tier A (100k) funds operators shipping a full production staking interface or multi-component stack from scratch.
Tier B (60k) funds code extensions of an existing solution.
Tier C (40k) funds ongoing operations and maintenance of an existing solution.
Selected operators
| Operator | Tier | Grant | What they’re shipping |
|---|---|---|---|
| CoBuilders | A | 100,000 SAFE | A staking dashboard, a CLI, and an MCP server so SAFE holders can stake from Claude Desktop, Cursor, or scripts. Plus subgraphs and a REST wrapper that any other Track A operator can consume. |
| Chainza | A | 100,000 SAFE | A staking dashboard, plus a reusable React widget that any wallet, DAO tool, or dashboard can drop in to embed SAFE staking with one component import. |
| BootNode | A | 100,000 SAFE | A staking dashboard with a validator selector showing on-chain participation rates, a plain-language risk preview before signing, and Safe Apps integration. |
| Protofire | A | 100,000 SAFE | A production staking dashboard with strong incident response (99% uptime SLA, 4-hour P1 response). |
| Eternal Safe | B | 60,000 SAFE | SAFE staking inside Eternal Safe, the IPFS-hosted Safe wallet instance. Stake, unstake, and claim without leaving the wallet, with fully parsed human-readable signing previews. |
| Core Contributors | C | 40,000 SAFE | Continued operation and maintenance of the existing staking interface at staking.safenet-beta.eth, which is the UI Safe Wallet integrates today. |
| Total | 500,000 SAFE |
Milestone structure
To keep the program simple across six grants in parallel, the same two milestones apply to every operator:
- M1 at Month 3 (60% of grant amount). Production deployment live, frontend open-source under MIT, all baseline RFP flows working (stake, unstake, claim, wallet integration).
- M2 at Month 12 (40% of grant amount). 12-month operational review.
12-month commitment
Every grantee, building from scratch or operating existing code, will have to commit to running their interface for a full 12 months. That covers:
- Maintenance for dependency updates and security patches
- Incident response when contracts, RPCs, or hosting providers have issues
- Uptime targeting at least 95%, with structural redundancy where the architecture supports it
- A public operational report at Month 12 covering uptime, usage, and any incidents along the way
The 40% held back to M2 is the enforcement mechanism. If an operator ships at M1 but lets the interface decay, M2 doesn’t release.
What each operator brings
CoBuilders submitted the most thorough proposal in the pool. The MCP server opens a path for AI-agent clients (Claude Desktop, Cursor, anything MCP-compatible) to stake on Safenet, which no other operator addresses. Their subgraphs and REST wrapper are also designed for other Track A operators to consume, including the existing reference UI.
Chainza designed for compounding value. Their widget can be embedded by any future wallet, dashboard, or DAO tool with a single component import. Their hosting design is the strongest in the pool, with five independent access paths to the same deployed application. They’ve shipped this architecture before at Velora and ExtraWallet on the same stack the RFP requires.
BootNode has a very deep Safe ecosystem track record. Several engineers were former core contributors to the Safe React App and Safe Apps SDK, and BootNode is a top-10 SafeDAO delegatee today. The Gnosis Bridge Explorer they built and operate is the closest UX precedent for the validator-aware product the RFP asks for.
Protofire has been contributing to Safe since 2018, touching the first versions of the codebase and helping expand Safe to over 100 chains. For this RFP they shipped a working PoC on Sepolia before applying, with stake, unstake, withdraw, and claim transactions already executing on-chain. The PoC plus their 99% SLA and named response times bring real operational discipline to the portfolio.
Eternal Safe holds the strongest cypherpunk posture of any applicant. Fully open source, IPFS and ENS only, no centralized backends, immutable versioned releases. Adding Safenet staking inside Eternal Safe means SAFE holders who rely on a decentralized wallet can stake without leaving their trusted surface. Devan is a previous Safe Grant alum.
Core Contributors has been operating the existing Safenet Beta staking interface since launch. That’s the interface Safe Wallet integrates today, which makes continued well-resourced operation a baseline for the rest of Safenet Beta. There’s a secondary benefit: having the team closest to Safenet operate a user-facing UI generates operational feedback that flows back into protocol decisions in a way no third-party operator can fully replicate.
On the remaining proposals
We received four further submissions that we’re not advancing in this round. Thanks to everyone who submitted, the quality of the pool made this a real selection process.
What’s next
We aim to finalize Grant agreements over the next 2-4 weeks. First mainnet deployments are expected by June/July.