Argent, a wallet for Ethereum-based digital currencies and blockchain applications, has raised $4m in Seed funding.
Index Ventures, Creandum, firstminute, Hummingbird and Atomico partner Mattias Ljungman participated in the round.
Available in the App and Google Play Stores, Argent will not hold or have access to user’s funds.
The startup’s CEO and co-founder, Itamar Lesuisse, shared his vision: “The web is dominated by monopolies and middlemen. Cambridge Analytica and Equifax highlighted the damage this was doing to people. The emerging decentralised web offers a better way – with people controlling their data, assets and identity. But it is still way too hard for most people to use, so adoption is slow. We founded Argent to fix this.”
Dr. Julien Niset, chief science officer and co-founder of Argent, said the company was looking to offer the bank-level usability and security, without the bank.
Argent is built on smart contracts, essentially self-executing orders containing the terms of an agreement and written into lines of code.
“Our smart contracts let users, for the first time, recover their wallets without a paper backup, set daily transaction limits and block fraudulent transactions. This makes Argent safer and easier to use than other wallets.”
Argent is looking to make a developer kit available in the future as it continues to explore partnerships in the finance and gaming sectors.
The startup’s founding team includes Lesuisse (ex-Amazon, Visa and BCG); Gerald Goldstein (PhD in nuclear physics and previously founded Peak); and Niset (PhD in quantum information, founded a quantum security startup and successfully sold the IP to a leading quantum security company).
Bjarke Staun-Olsen at Creandum, commented: “Having backed Itamar and Gerald’s previous startup,Peak, which successfully exited in 2016, we knew how strong their ability to execute in consumer mobile was. And as they were combining with Julien’s expertise in cryptography, we knew this was the right team to drive consumer adoption at scale.”
Ari Helgason, Index Ventures, went on to note: “Argent has developed a critical piece of infrastructure that paves the way for mainstream adoption of blockchain applications. The team’s technology breakthrough allows users to overcome the tradeoff between security and ease of use that has characterised wallets until now.”
Disclaimer: This article should not be perceived as an endorsement of cryptocurrencies and all readers are advised to carry out thorough due diligence prior to investing.