SAFE uses a different mechanism to arrive at concensus (close groups). Many advantages over blockchain (scalability, energy efficency, security, decentralisation of nodes) compared to blockchain concensus, which is vulnerable to mining, geographical and jurisdiction centralisation as we see has happened to bitcoin.
The applications of SAFE are not limited to storage, but this is at its core and its unique built in non-blockchain cryptocurrency has utility because it is issued by the network in exchange for resources (farming) and accepted by the network as payment for storage (and later computation) on top of instant no fee transactions, scalability, and complete anonymity (no ledger - each SafeCoin is a piece of data with no history).
With an API it also supports applications desktop/mobile/web, all in an entirely decentralised Internet like infrastructure. So while Ethereum has adopted some of the same goals, it is firstly a blockchain adapted to computation whereas SAFEnetwork is decentralised anonymous Internet (storage, comunications, apps, computation) from the ground up, with its own built in cryptocurrency (low friction, scalable, inherent value etc).
SAFEnetwork should be more secure rather than less secure to many attacks (eg 80% of bids rather than 51%). Security, anonymity and privacy are core design goals, and considered at every level.