Argent Newsletter - Issue #2

Layer 2 momentum, public goods, zero-knowledge proofs and much more

Tagged

Edward Wilson

Jul 16, 2024

Quick summary

We hope you enjoyed our first newsletter. As always, there's been a lifetime of crypto news since then. We've picked our favorite bits below.

🌍 Layer 2 momentum

Big funding news for our Layer 2 partners as Matter Labs, the team behind zkSync, and Starkware, the team behind StarkNet, both raised $50m. A16Z led the former's round; Sequoia the latter's.

zkSync vs StarkWare

For more on what they do, and the differences between them, read this comparison by Alex Beckett.

Also on the topic of scaling, we recommend the ultimate guide to L2s on Ethereum by DCBuilder. And this update on Ethereum's roadmap.

In other good news for L2, exchanges OKEx, Bybit and Huobi say they plan to support on/off-ramps to zkSync, helping you to avoid Layer 1 gas fees. Coinbase are also rumoured to be on it. 🥳

For the easiest on-ramp, use Ramp to buy ETH, wBTC, USDC or DAI within our L2 wallet.

🏛️ Tokenization, public goods & DAOs

The recent ENS token launch and DAO is a great example. To learn more about DAOs, read how they're the next big thing after NFTs.

Supporting public goods in web 2.0, like Wikipedia, has depended on volunteers and donations. Web 3.0 changes this with tokenization.

The recent ENS token launch and DAO is a great example as early adopters got rewarded with tokens and ENS can fund themselves.

To learn more about DAOs, read how they're the next big thing after NFTs.

🎧 Our favorite podcasts & reads

Listen to AAVE Founder Stani Kulechov on The Scoop with Frank Chaparro discussing DeFi, AAVE and the decentralized social media platform they’re building. Good timing following Twitter's news that it's building a crypto team.

Another podcast we enjoyed this week is Su Zhu and Hasu discussing how to value crypto assets.

Last, we have the Matter Labs co-Founders on the a16z podcast, discussing zero-knowledge proofs and how zkSync will scale Ethereum without compromising on security or decentralization.

For articles, we enjoyed Colossus's deep dive into one of the leading NFT projects Bored Ape Yacht Club.

⚡ Argent update: Free wallet recovery

We introduced a highly requested feature: free wallet recovery. It layers your security with encryption and cloud storage. To learn more, read our blog post.

Introducing free wallet recovery