Argent’s new wallet lets you trade, earn interest, stake and lend for up to 100X lower fees than Ethereum. It’s Decentralized Finance (DeFi) as it should be. Here’s an overview.
What is DeFi?
DeFi is an exciting alternative to traditional finance. Based on blockchains like Ethereum, it gives anyone, anywhere access to new financial opportunities. It does this while giving you, not another institution, control of your assets.
DeFi removes intermediaries, lowers barriers to entry, increases automation, resists censorship, and facilitates innovation.
Here’s how to access the best DeFi projects for low fees in Argent.
How to access L2 DeFi?
Simply open Argent, and then tap ‘Invest’ at the bottom of your screen to see all the ways you can trade, earn, stake and lend crypto on zkSync.
Trade
Access low-cost, high-speed trading. This is made possible with ZigZag Exchange where trades can cost as low as $0.20!
This is significantly cheaper than trading on Layer 1, which regularly costs over $50-$100 when the network is busy. Layer 2 fixes this.
More trading pairs are constantly being made available.
Learn more about trading on Layer 2
Earn
We offer two ways for you to passively earn yield on crypto you hold. This is provided by Yearn and Gro.
Yearn lets you earn on ETH, WBTC, USDC and DAI.
Gro offers leveraged yield for stablecoins - USDC and DAI - which is our higher risk, higher reward product.
In both options, yield is earned by automatically putting your crypto to work (yield farming) across various DeFi protocols, generating exchange fees, interest from lending, and token incentives.
Learn more about Yearn on Layer 2
Learn more about Gro on Layer 2
Stake
Grow your ETH investment by staking it with Lido. Staking secures the ETH 2.0 network - an Ethereum network upgrade - and the rewards are an incentive for people to participate.
Lido simplifies the entire staking process and lets you withdraw at any time. There’s currently over $6 billion being staked via Lido on Ethereum.
Learn more about Lido on Layer 2
Lend
Lend your stablecoins on Aave to earn interest from borrowers. Lending in DeFi works by eliminating centralized intermediaries, like banks, from the lending and borrowing process.
Instead, lenders deposit their funds with Aave. These deposits form pools, from which borrowers take out loans at a variable rate - meaning the interest goes up and down - and this interest gets paid to the lenders, which generates the return.
Learn more about Aave on Layer 2.
It's this easy to invest
Crypto shouldn’t be confusing. That’s why Argent’s design is easy-to-use so anyone can securely store and invest their crypto.
Take a look:
How it works on zkSync 1.0
ZkSync is just getting started and smart contracts are coming with version 2.0 in 2022 - until then, we’ve partnered with leading DeFi providers to bring a selection of popular investment options and utilize atomic swaps on zkSync - a trustless, peer-to-peer way to swap tokens between two parties.
Risks
As always in crypto and DeFi, you should do your own research on the risks. These include smart contracts and the economics of the protocols.
Disclaimer: This blog post is for informational purposes and is not financial advice. Investing in cryptocurrencies and DeFi involves risk and can result in you losing money.
