In an effort to accelerate its mission in building one app for all things DeFi and Web3, Argent has today concluded its Series B funding raising $40M. This funding round was primarily led by Fabric Ventures and Metaplanet beside the existing investor Paradigm. It also saw the involvement of other existing investors Index Ventures and Creandum, as well as strategic investors Starkware, Animoca and Jump.
“Wallets will be central to value accrual in Web3 as users become sticky to their wallet provider. And people, in particular, will prefer offerings like Argent’s. Its self-custody, smart contract wallet combines security, usability and low fees,” said Anil Hansjee, General Partner at Fabric Ventures.
Solving the technicality and large costs associated with crypto
Despite the emergence of crypto just over a decade ago, with Bitcoin leading the way, the entire ecosystem surrounding this technology as well as Web3 remains quite new. The consequence is the lack of an industry standard for how brokers pass along the related costs or manage flows in the space. This has resulted in the crypto world still being too technical, too expensive and way too complicated even for technical users. From high fees to limited use cases & questionable security, centralized exchanges (CEXs) and traditional wallets have been underserving their customers.
Argent has systematically solved many of these issues, enabling customers to buy, trade and earn crypto at the touch of a button thereby reducing transaction fees from hundreds of dollars to cents. Additionally, Argent is eliminating dated security measures such as seed phrases, all within a simple and clean UI.
“For crypto to live up to its potential, it needs to break the stranglehold of big exchanges and incumbent wallets. The experience is too scary, expensive and insecure for most people. Argent fixes this!” remarked Itamar Lesuisse, Argent’s Co-Founder & CEO.
Unifying crypto and Web3 operations under a single platform
The London-based startup was founded in 2017 by Gerald Goldstein, Itamar Lesuisse and Julien Niset. Its platform has grown to be the most simple and secure smart wallet for crypto. Furthermore, the startup’s vision doesn’t stop there, with the team making efforts going way beyond financial use cases. Argent is building a single app for all things DeFi and Web3, while also actively exploring new features and verticals, including virtual real estate, NFTs, gaming and DAOs.
Lesuisse further elaborated on his company’s ambitions stating, “This latest investment will enable us to double-down on product development, bringing more DeFi and Web3 use cases to the app, and enable us to expand into South America, where due to high levels of inflation and a deep mistrust of institutions, our product-market fit is especially strong.” Argent will strategically expand across Latin America, initially beginning with Mexico. Since its founding, Argent has attracted more than 500,000 users to its platform, and raised more than $56M in funding.
