DeFi wallet Argent raises $40 million and takes aim at gaming

Argent, the London-based startup vying to build a DeFi super-app, has raised $40 million in a Series B round.

Fabric Ventures and Skype co-founder Jaan Tallinn’s investment firm Metaplanet led the investment. Existing investors Paradigm, Index Ventures and Creandum also participated, alongside new strategic backers Starkware, Jump Crypto and Animoca Brands.

The money will be used to accelerate Argent’s plans to support a wider spectrum of activities across DeFi and web3.

“Argent still feels very finance-centric, and we want to play a big role in other NFT verticals — so NFT gaming, virtual real estate,” co-founder and CEO Itamar Lesuisse said in an interview with The Block. “We want to be the de facto wallet for gaming.”

Fulfilling that vision will involve rolling out new functionality for crypto games, such as infrastructure for onboarding new players and signing in-game transactions.

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Currently, Argent users are able to store certain non-fungible tokens (NFTs) within their wallets through connections to marketplaces like OpenSea. 

Mexico bound

Proceeds from the raise will also be used to build out Argent’s services in Latin America, beginning in Mexico, where Lesuisse sees strong demand for the product. Some money will also go towards hiring in-house legal, finance and treasury management experts, as well as for a new research team focused on Layer 2 protocols, according to Lesuisse.

Founded in 2017, Argent resembles a fintech “smart wallet” app but built for DeFi — allowing users to buy, store and send crypto. Argent says its app has had more than 500,000 sign-ups.

In March, the startup officially launched a new version of its crypto wallet built on zkSync, an Ethereum-focused scaling solution, with the broad aim of cutting the cost and environmental impact of interacting with DeFi.

Argent has also built a wallet named Argent X on rival Ethereum-scaling solution StarkNet, which is the reason Lesuisse described Starkware’s participation in the Series B round as strategic. “We are doing a massive push on StarkNet and their permissionless network with Argent X,” he added.  

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