Argent: Smart Contract Wallet Without Private Keys, Securely Navigating Web3

What is Argent

Friends, imagine how convenient it is when we use bank cards, Alipay, or WeChat Pay in daily life, right? But in the blockchain world, managing digital assets (like Bitcoin, Ethereum) isn’t that simple. You often encounter complex concepts such as “private keys” and “mnemonic phrases”—if you lose them, you could lose all your assets. Argent is like a “smart bank card” or “smart wallet manager” in the blockchain world, aiming to make managing your digital assets as simple and secure as mobile payments.

It’s a mobile non-custodial wallet based on Ethereum and Starknet (an “expressway” for Ethereum, which we’ll discuss later). “Non-custodial” means your assets are fully under your own control; Argent as a company cannot touch your money, just like keeping cash in your own home safe—the key is in your hand, not with the bank.

Argent’s core feature is its use of “smart contract wallet” technology. You can think of it as a very intelligent program written on the blockchain, which helps you manage assets and provides many convenient and secure features that traditional wallets lack. For example, it doesn’t require you to remember a long, complicated “mnemonic phrase” (like a bank card password, but much longer and harder to memorize), but instead uses more user-friendly ways to protect and recover your wallet.

Target Users and Core Scenarios: Argent is mainly aimed at ordinary users who want to enter the world of decentralized finance (DeFi—various financial services on the blockchain, such as lending, asset management, etc.) and Web3 (the next generation of the internet, emphasizing decentralization and user ownership) safely and conveniently. It simplifies interactions with various decentralized applications (DApps—applications on the blockchain), allowing you to easily store, send, trade digital assets, and even participate in lending and earning yields.

Typical Usage Flow:

• Create Wallet: Simply download the Argent app on your phone and set a username and password—no need to deal with complicated mnemonic phrases.
• Asset Management: You can view all your digital assets in the wallet and send or receive them.
• Secure Recovery: If you lose your phone, you can recover your wallet using the “Guardians” feature, without needing a mnemonic phrase. These guardians can be your friends, family, or even your other devices (like a hardware wallet).
• DeFi Interaction: The wallet is integrated with DeFi protocols like MakerDAO and Kyber Network, allowing you to lend, trade, and more directly within the app.

Project Vision and Value Proposition

Argent’s vision is ambitious: it hopes to build a “financial super app” for the Web3 and DeFi space. In short, it wants you to be able to handle all things related to digital assets with one app, just like how we use Alipay or WeChat for many financial services today.

Its core value proposition includes:

• Lowering Barriers, Popularizing Crypto: Blockchain technology has huge potential, but for ordinary people, its complexity and high security risks (like losing private keys) have always been major obstacles. Argent aims to eliminate these barriers through its innovative smart contract wallet, making it easy and safe for more people to use cryptocurrencies and decentralized services.
• Ultimate Security, User Control: Traditional wallets rely on private keys—if lost or leaked, it’s catastrophic. Argent uses the “Guardians” mechanism and multi-signature technology to greatly enhance security, while ensuring users have full control over their assets (non-custodial). You can set daily transfer limits or only allow transfers to trusted addresses, like adding smart locks to your digital assets.
• Seamless Experience, Integrated DeFi: It’s not just a tool for storing assets, but also a gateway to the DeFi world. Users can participate in various decentralized financial activities directly within the wallet, without switching between different apps, greatly improving the user experience.

Compared to similar projects (like MetaMask), Argent’s biggest difference is its underlying “smart contract wallet” design. MetaMask is a traditional wallet based on “Externally Owned Accounts” (EOA) and requires mnemonic phrases. Argent is fully based on smart contracts, enabling advanced features like mnemonic-free recovery, social recovery, and transaction limits, offering users stronger security and a more user-friendly experience.

Technical Features

Argent’s technical core is its Smart Contract Wallet.

• Smart Contract Wallet

  You can think of a smart contract as an automatically executed “contract” or “program” on the blockchain. Traditional crypto wallets are like simple safes—you have one key (private key), and if you lose it, the safe can’t be opened. Argent’s smart contract wallet is like a safe controlled by a program, with many built-in features, such as:

  • Mnemonic-Free Recovery: No need to remember a string of complicated words (mnemonic phrase). If you lose your phone, you can recover your wallet through pre-set “Guardians,” who can be friends, family, or your other devices.
  • Guardians: These guardians don’t directly control your assets, but act as your “security advisors.” They can help lock your wallet or approve recovery requests, but can’t move your funds. It’s like setting up trusted family fingerprints for your smart door lock—they can help unlock it if you forget the password, but can’t take things from your safe.
  • Transaction Limits and Whitelists: You can set a daily maximum transfer amount or only allow transfers to trusted addresses, effectively preventing large-scale theft.
  • Multi-signature (Multi-sig): Some operations may require multiple “signatures” to execute, further enhancing security.

• Meta-transactions

  On Ethereum, operations usually require paying “Gas fees” (miner fees), and must be paid in ETH, which is troublesome for beginners. Argent uses “meta-transaction” technology, allowing users to pay Gas fees with other tokens, or even waive Gas fees in some cases. It’s like taking a taxi—the driver (miner) needs to be paid, but Argent pays for you first, and you repay Argent in another way, making Gas fees almost invisible and greatly improving user experience.

• Layer 1 and Layer 2 Support

  Argent started as a wallet on Ethereum mainnet (Layer 1), but transactions there are slow and expensive. To solve this, Argent actively supports Layer 2 solutions, especially zkSync and Starknet. Layer 2 can be understood as “expressways” built on Ethereum mainnet, enabling faster and cheaper transactions. Argent X is a browser extension wallet designed specifically for Starknet.

• EIP-1271 Standard

  Since Argent is a smart contract wallet, it can’t sign directly with a private key like traditional wallets. Therefore, it follows the EIP-1271 standard, a protocol that allows smart contracts to perform valid signature verification, ensuring compatibility with various decentralized applications.

Tokenomics

Friends, it’s important to clarify that, according to official sources and public information, the Argent smart contract wallet project itself has not issued its own native cryptocurrency (i.e., there is no ARG token).

On some crypto information platforms (such as CoinMarketCap), there is indeed a token called “Argent Token (ARG).” However, according to its description, this ARG token is used to “facilitate secure, efficient, and transparent silver trading” and is issued on Binance Smart Chain (BSC). This is completely different from the Argent smart contract wallet project focused on Ethereum and Starknet. Please be sure to distinguish and not confuse the two.

Therefore, for the Argent smart contract wallet project, we cannot provide information on its token symbol, issuance chain, total supply, issuance mechanism, inflation/burn, circulation, utility, allocation, or unlocking, as it currently does not have its own native token.

Team, Governance, and Funding

• Core Members and Team Features

  The Argent team is composed of experienced founders, including CEO Itamar Lesuisse, Gerald Goldstein, and Julien Niset. They have deep backgrounds in crypto and are committed to solving user pain points through technological innovation, making the crypto world more usable and secure. The team is headquartered in London.

• Governance Mechanism

  As Argent is a smart contract wallet, its core functions and security are guaranteed by smart contract code deployed on the blockchain. This means the wallet’s rules are open, transparent, and immutable (unless upgraded through preset mechanisms). This smart contract-based feature itself reflects a decentralized governance philosophy—rules are determined by code, not by a single entity.

• Funding

  The Argent project has completed multiple funding rounds. For example, in March 2020, it raised $12 million in a Series A led by Paradigm. Other sources show the project has completed a $40 million funding round. These funds support Argent’s product development, technological innovation, and marketing efforts to realize its vision of building a Web3 financial super app.

Roadmap

Argent’s roadmap focuses on improving user experience, expanding features, and supporting emerging blockchain technologies:

• Key Historical Milestones and Events:

  • 2018: Argent wallet launched on Ethereum mainnet (Layer 1) as a decentralized, secure smart contract wallet, with innovative features like mnemonic-free recovery attracting attention.
  • March 2020: Completed $12 million Series A funding led by Paradigm, accelerating product development.
  • 2021: Published its “manifesto,” clarifying its focus on large wallet security on Layer 1 and launching Layer 2 wallets to popularize crypto.
  • Late 2021/Early 2022: Added support for Layer 2 networks like zkSync and Starknet to reduce transaction fees and increase speed, attracting over 500,000 users to the Layer 2 wallet waitlist.
  • 2022: Fully launched its Layer 2 service based on zkSync and released the Argent X browser extension wallet for Starknet, initially mainly as a developer tool.

• Future Key Plans and Milestones:

  • Expanding DeFi and Web3 Features: Plans to extend wallet functionality to new areas such as virtual real estate, gaming, decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs), and non-fungible tokens (NFTs), further realizing its goal of a “Web3 and DeFi financial super app.”
  • Continuous Layer 2 Experience Optimization: Ongoing development and optimization on Layer 2 solutions like Starknet, providing smoother, lower-cost transaction experiences.
  • Enhanced Recovery Mechanisms: Developing more convenient on-chain recovery features for products like Argent X.
  • Physical Card Launch: Argent has launched physical cards (such as Argent Metal Card), offering cashback, free bridging, and other benefits, further connecting the crypto world with real-world spending.

Common Risk Reminders

Although Argent strives to provide a safer and more convenient crypto experience, as a blockchain project, it still faces some inherent risks:

• Technical and Security Risks

  • Smart Contract Risks: Argent’s core is smart contracts. Although they are audited, any code may have unknown vulnerabilities. If a smart contract has a flaw, users’ assets may be at risk.
  • Layer 2 Risks: Layer 2 solutions improve efficiency, but their technical complexity may introduce new security challenges. Layer 2 networks themselves may have potential centralization risks or technical failures.
  • Private Key Management (for Guardians): While Argent eliminates direct mnemonic management for users, the “Guardians” mechanism introduces a new trust model. If chosen guardians are unreliable or their accounts are compromised, wallet security may be affected.
  • Mobile Security: As a mobile app, wallet security also depends on the phone’s security. If the phone is attacked by malware or lost, risks remain.

• Economic Risks

  • Market Volatility Risk: Crypto asset prices fluctuate sharply; any cryptocurrency held in Argent wallet may face value decline risk.
  • DeFi Protocol Risks: Argent integrates various DeFi protocols, but the DeFi space has many projects of varying quality. When interacting with DeFi protocols, users bear risks such as smart contract vulnerabilities and economic model failures.

• Compliance and Operational Risks

  • Regulatory Uncertainty: Global regulation of cryptocurrencies and DeFi is still evolving; policy changes may affect Argent’s operations and user services.
  • User Learning Curve: Although Argent simplifies operations, for blockchain newcomers with no technical background, understanding concepts like “smart contract wallet,” “non-custodial,” and “Layer 2” still requires some learning.

Verification Checklist

As a blockchain research analyst, when evaluating any project, we need to conduct some basic verification to ensure information transparency and project activity:

• Block Explorer Contract Addresses:
  • For Argent Vault (Layer 1 wallet) on Ethereum mainnet, its smart contract address can be found on Ethereum block explorers (such as Etherscan).
  • For Argent X wallet on Starknet, its contract address can be found on Starknet block explorers (such as Voyager, Starkscan, Viewblock).
• GitHub Activity:
  • Visit Argent’s official GitHub repository (e.g.,
    argentlabs
    ) to check code update frequency, number of contributors, issue resolution, etc., to assess project development activity and transparency.
• Official Website and Social Media:
  • Check Argent’s official website and social media (such as Twitter, Medium blog) for the latest announcements, updates, and community interactions.
• Audit Reports:
  • Look for third-party security audit reports of Argent smart contracts to understand their code security assessment.

Project Summary

In summary, Argent is a highly innovative project in the blockchain wallet space. By introducing the concept of a “smart contract wallet,” it greatly improves the convenience and security of digital asset management, especially by eliminating the complexity of mnemonic management in traditional wallets, paving the way for ordinary users to enter the crypto world.

You can think of Argent as a digital safe with an “AI butler.” This butler not only keeps your assets safe, but can also help you recover them through trusted friends or devices if you run into trouble (like losing your phone), and automatically handle complex transaction fees, making it worry-free to use.

It actively embraces Layer 2 technology, supporting “expressways” like zkSync and Starknet, aiming to solve Ethereum mainnet’s slow transactions and high fees, allowing users to enjoy DeFi and Web3 at lower cost and higher speed.

However, like any emerging technology, Argent comes with risks such as smart contract vulnerabilities, market volatility, and regulatory uncertainty. Notably, the Argent wallet project itself currently does not have a native token, so any “ARG” token seen on the market is not from this Argent project.

For those who want to explore decentralized finance and the Web3 world but are deterred by the complexity of traditional crypto wallets, Argent offers a very user-friendly entry point. It strives to make “your assets, your control” a reality. But remember, blockchain investment carries risks; the above is a project introduction, not investment advice. Always do your own research (DYOR - Do Your Own Research) before making any decisions.