Issue 35: What is everyone talking about at ETHDenver?
Issue 35: What is everyone talking about at ETHDenver?
The latest updates from the Ethereum, L2 & DeFi ecosystem
gm everyone - welcome to our newsletter, where we summarise the latest updates in the Ethereum ecosystem.
TLDR:
The solution to bringing crypto to the masses is right around the corner with Account Abstraction
OpenSea is facing some hot competition with the rise of Blur
Coinbase enters the Layer 2 wars by launching Base
Read all this and more in this week's newsletter!
🤔 How do we bring the masses to crypto?
The answer is Account Abstraction, and that's why everyone is talking about at one of the most significant crypto events of the year: ETH Denver.
But you might be asking, what on earth is Account Abstraction, and why should I care? We're glad you asked. Simply put, Account Abstraction turns every account on the blockchain into a smart contract. This allows wallets to be tailored to the user's needs rather than having a one-account-fits-all approach like we currently have. For example, if you want more security, you can have 2FA or require multiple signatures for every transaction. But not everyone will want that, and that's okay. You can decide what suits you best, though wallets may specialize for specific use cases.
Some have recently claimed that “Account Abstraction is live” with ERC-4337. This is not true.
What has happened is the ERC-4337 contract has been deployed on some EVM chains. ERC-4337 is a standard to decentralize meta-transactions, but your accounts remain normal smart contract accounts, like Argent, which we've been doing since 2018.
Nevertheless, it's a great achievement to be celebrated. After all, the more people talking about Account Abstraction and are excited about how it'll transform how we interact with Ethereum and other chains, the sooner we'll see it adopted at the protocol level!
🤺 Battle of the NFT marketplaces
Since the launch of Blur, NFT trading has seen a rapid increase, with the NFT marketplace generating over $1.5 billion worth of Ethereum NFT trades in the past month alone and has become one of the largest gas guzzlers on the network.
OpenSea, in contrast, has managed a respectable but much lower $420 million worth of Ethereum NFT trading volume over the past month, causing the market leader to be temporarily dethroned.
The rise in Blur's popularity is partly due to its unique marketplace model, which incentivizes traders to treat NFTs like DeFi tokens, encouraging frequent flipping and maximizing benefits through liquidity mining. Traders have been flipping NFTs with greater frequency to gain points which earned traders a substantial airdrop.
If you come for the king, you best not miss. OpenSea, in an attempt to fight back, announced a temporary removal of their 2.5% fee on sales and cutting down creator royalty protections to give sellers more from sales.
🎸 It's all about the Base
Coinbase has entered the Layer 2 wars after launching Base, built using Optimism's OP Stack. Like with other L2s, Base will offer a secure, low-cost, developer-friendly way to build decentralized apps, with the security and scalability of Ethereum at a fraction of the cost.
Coinbase and OP Labs share a joint vision for scaling Ethereum. Together, they'll work with the Optimism Collective to design and build a protocol that can sequence many L2s and provide interoperability and composability between them via the OP Stack.
Could the launch of Base be a genius move for Coinbase? Only time will tell. For now, here's one interesting take on Base that we think you'll enjoy reading.
Argent has no plans to support Base as we're currently focused on Starknet and zkSync Era.
📚 What we're reading
Some personal user experiences - Vitalik Buterin
Simulating Token Economies: Motivations and Insights - 6thmanventures
Nouns DAO and the Philosophy of Governance - Stanford Blockchain Review
💭 What's happening at Argent
In case you missed it, we held our first community call since our last newsletter. Our CEO, Itamar, was joined by our Head of Operates and Strategy, Matthew, to discuss everything Argent: What we've been up to, why we're incredibly bullish on Starknet and zkSync, and it ended with a live Q&A.
If you want to learn more about Argent, we highly recommend you listen to it. And if you missed this community call, don't worry - we'll be doing more this year as one of our many attempts to involve the Argent community more.
You may be in luck if you've used our zkSync wallet and made some trades in-app. ZigZag, our swap provider on zkSync (only), has airdropped their ZZ tokens to valued community members. Check your Argent wallet to see if you qualified.
Finally, next week we're running a small promotion. But more on that Monday 👀
📰 A few random things we've found interesting
In every issue, we share 3 things that we found interesting. The catch? We don't give you any context to the link. But we promise you it's something we found interesting within the crypto ecosystem.
📚 Learn more with Argent
What is Argent X?
The most popular and only open-source wallet on Starknet
🚀 We're hiring!
Anthony Sassano, Ethereum educator, influencer, and all-around great person, recently said that the best way to get a job in crypto is to get involved with Ethereum's Layer 2 ecosystem.
We're building on zkSync and Starknet, two very exciting Layer 2s at the cutting edge of our industry, and we're hiring!
Social Media and Content Manager (Remote, Europe)
Senior Mobile QA Engineer (Remote, Europe)
Know someone who might be a good fit? We pay a referral fee for each successful hire.
📰 Enjoyed reading the Argent newsletter?
Thank you for reading Issue #35 of the Argent Newsletter. If you enjoyed reading this issue, we'd love for you to share it with friends and family or on social media.
Have a great week, and if you have any feedback, ideas, or insights to improve our newsletter, please email edward@argent.xyz.
🤔 About the Argent Newsletter
The Argent newsletter is our answer to a question friends and family frequently ask us: what articles, podcasts, and news do you recommend?
We curate our top picks and hope there's something for everyone.
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