The Multi-Currency Mandate: Decentralizing the Dollar & Securing Onchain Sovereignty

At EthCC, Safe's Julian Grigo and SG-FORGE's Sylvain Prigent made the case for breaking USD dominance onchain, as a global infrastructure imperative for a more resilient and sovereign onchain economy. Watch the video here.

An unlikely alliance

Safe and Societe Generale - FORGE share a thesis: DeFi’s progress is undermined by a fatal flaw baked in from the start - excessive reliance on a single currency. 

Over 95% of the onchain economy (DEXing, lending, perps, payments) runs on the US dollar. Any system where a single asset, issued under a single jurisdiction, controls 95% of activity carries a single point of failure. And it carries a more immediate problem: yield that isn't really yield.

The FX trap

DeFi yield is an illusion if you don't live in the US.

In early 2025, a friend deposited USDC into a vault that was set to gain 4.5% yield per annum. From January to July 2025, the dollar weakened 13% against the euro - wiping out that yield position entirely. European holders would need roughly three years of returns just to recover the FX loss, before accounting for inflation.

European retail users, businesses, and treasuries holding USD stablecoins aren't fully participating in DeFi. They're paying an invisible FX premium just to show up, and this isn't just a European problem.

A Safe team member in India shared this snippet from the India Times, showing the rupee's performance against other global currencies. For users whose liabilities are in INR, getting exposure to EUR or GBP would have historically served them better than USD. USD is not always the best hedge - diversification is, and DeFi doesn't currently offer that choice.

Weaponization of the stack 

Europe's digital economy already runs on foreign rails (Visa, Mastercard, PayPal) and onchain is no different: dominant stablecoins are USD-denominated and backed by US companies, including EURC, which is issued by Circle, a US entity.

The real risk is concentration. A regulatory shift impacting USD stablecoins tomorrow would affect almost all of DeFi.

The argument isn't trustless purity - 95% of DeFi sits under a single jurisdiction's regulatory risk, and that concentration is the real vulnerability. A Tier-1 European bank issuing a permissionless asset on a public network distributes that risk: diverse issuers, jurisdictions, and legal regimes. Like US stablecoins, EURCV carries a freeze function under MiCA, but it's currently the only banking-grade stablecoin compatible with DeFi, and that gap has real systemic consequences.

The blueprint

• A secure way to access and lend assets. Safe's permissionless self-custody infrastructure - no gatekeepers, no approval required. $40B+ in assets secured across the ecosystem.

• A high-quality asset. SG-FORGE brings institutional capital into deep lending markets. Institutional trust meets permissionless access: no KYC barriers, no custodians, no brokers.

• Demand follows. In under a month, the EURCV vault became the largest vault in Safe Earn, with over €7.5M deposited:

The multi-currency mandate

The value of digital sovereignty is structural. It requires infrastructure that is economically self-sustaining, jurisdictionally diversified, and built on open rails. A DeFi ecosystem where 95% of activity is subject to the decisions of a single government is not sovereign, regardless of what the whitepaper says.

The multi-currency mandate isn't about replacing the dollar. It's about having options - and the infrastructure to act on them. Builders: stop building on USD-only pools. Users: diversify your onchain currency exposure. The rails are here.

Safe and SG-FORGE launched a dedicated Morpho vault in February 2026 – euro-denominated DeFi yield, natively inside a smart account. Explore the vault.

Safe{Labs}

5 June 2026

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