On Tuesday, June 28, 2022, zkLend Co-Founder Brian hosted the first AMA in the ZEND&FRIENDS Infrastructure series. Our first guest speaker was no-other than Julien, Chief Security Officer of Argent. In case you missed our AMA, you can listen to it below or check our our recap below.
Full Recording
Listen to the full recording on our Spotify now.
AMA TLDR
The ‘Why’ of Argent [04:38]
Me (Julien) and my co-founders wanted to build something for users, a consumer-focused application. We identified some key friction areas when it came to crypto wallets.
1. Seed Phrases
The first one we encountered was the need for a seed phrase. For 30 years we tried to convince people not to write their password on a piece of paper, and now when you create a wallet the first thing you are asked is to write your seed phrase on a piece of paper and make a few copies.
I believe that is a terrible user experience, and in terms of security, a very bad idea since most people won’t be able to secure their seed phrase. We tackled this problem with fresh eyes and came up with the idea of social recovery.
2. Gas Fees
The second problem we encountered was gas fees, it is quite complicated when you come to the blockchain. You need to set up a gas limit, and a gas price, if you don’t set it right you will get a failed transaction. All this to us seemed like too much complexity.
For us, the solution for these two problems is a smart contract wallet. If your wallet is a smart contract you can put logic into it. You can reproduce the flow that users face.
We want to solve these points of friction, but with a user interface that is as good as any modern banking application. All of this without losing self-custody. — Julien [07:59]
The Argent Journey [10:21]
We started off with Argent Vault as an App on iOS and Android on L1 which users really loved but pretty soon gas fees started to increase a lot. Naturally, our product became mostly used by users with a lot of assets.
Smart contract wallets have more security but are a bit more expensive since logic is on-chain. This cost issue made us look into Layer 2 solutions. We started speaking with the main teams building L2 solutions like Arbitrum, Optimism, zkSync, StarkWare. From a vision and strategic point of view, zkRollup was the right solution for us (even though we love optimistic rollups also).
This is why we started building Argent X on StarkNet as a browser extension.
Account Abstraction Explained [16:39]
Account abstraction is making every account a smart contract.
Currently, there is a connection between your wallet address and your private key which is hardcoded in the Ethereum network. The problem with this approach is that if you lose your private key you lose everything, there is no flexibility. With account abstraction, at a protocol level, the account is a smart contract that is customisable. This allows us to program the account with the logic that we want.
One possible use case in the future can be that protocols (dApps) want to subsidize transaction fees/gas costs for their users.
Social Recovery Explained [31:21]
Social recovery is providing an experience that users understand. Similar to how you call your bank when you lose your credit card and ask them to stop transactions on it and issue a new one.
With social recovery, you choose who you want your “bank” to be, a hardware wallet or some you trust (guardian), for example. This way you get the best of both worlds, you use your Argent wallet on your daily uses and your hardware wallet, guardian, or a combination of both when you have a problem. — Julien, [32:12]
About Argent
Argent is a smart wallet designed for all things DeFi and Web3. It is a non-custodial wallet that combines easy access to dApps with security features such as multisig and social recovery, doing away with seed phrases.
In April, Argent recently raised $40 million for its Series B round, with top-tier investors such as Fabric Ventures, Metaplanet, StarkWare, Jump Crypto, and Animoca Brands. Other investors like Paradigm, Index Ventures, and Creandum also participated in this round.
With product presence across both L1 (Ethereum) and L2 (StarkNet + zkSync), Argent is well positioned to capture the influx of users coming onto L2 this summer.
Argent has a few products under its umbrella, including Argent, Argent Vault, and Argent X:
- Argent is a mobile wallet built on zkSync with direct on-ramp features (partnership with Ramp and Moonpay to buy crypto) and integration with dApps such as Lido and Yearn. As one of the earliest wallets on zkSync since late 2021, Argent had over 500,000 signs up on the waitlist ahead of zkSync 2.0 launch.
- Argent Vault is a vault built for the highest security on Ethereum Layer 1, targeting wallets with >$50,000 (Whale alert!). Users on Argent Vault can customise permission settings, including dApp trust lists, trusted sessions, Guardian-approved transactions, and recovery (also known as social recovery). Guardians are friends, hardware wallets, your MetaMask, or Argent’s automated solution.
- Argent X is the first browser-based wallet built on StarkNet, supported by Chrome and Firefox. Unlike Ethereum L1 where private keys and accounts are typically the same things, StarkNet supports account abstraction which means that every account is a smart contract that must be deployed before you can interact with the network. Argent X simplifies all this complexity by securing users’ private keys, deploying account contracts, and managing the interaction with StarkNet. Already Argent X has surpassed 120,000 downloads, with new features being introduced including 3D NFTs and NFT transfers.
This section was adapted from our original thread, here.
About zkLend
zkLend is an L2 money-market protocol built on StarkNet, combining zk-rollup scalability, superior transaction speed, and cost-savings with Ethereum’s security. The protocol offers a dual solution: a permissioned and compliance-focused solution for institutional clients, and a permissionless service for DeFi users — all without sacrificing decentralisation.
