Argent Newsletter - Issue #28

gm everyone - we hope you’ve all had a great week. If you have any feedback or suggestions to help improve this newsletter, please email edward@argent.xyz.

TLDR: 

1. The DCCPA and its merits were debated 
2. Layer 2s are exploding with activity 
3. Reddit onboarded millions onto crypto 

Now let’s get into it all and more! 🚀

🤔 How do we regulate crypto?

Last week's issue covered the DCCPA - a proposed US bill threatening crypto and DeFi as it would require know your customer (KYC) for DeFi frontends, like Aave, among other things.

It was fiercely debated.

Sam Bankmen-Freid of FTX was in favor, arguing that regulations were needed to protect consumers. And against - the leading response came from Erik Voorhees, who embodied all the feelings of the bill's critics.

These two voices acted as defacto leaders for their camps and were hosted by Bankless this week to debate the bill and its merits.

Over two hours, both speakers made great points. But if you don't have the time to listen to the entire debate, you must listen to this powerful clip of Erik Voorhees, who gives us a great reminder of the impact this industry can have on society.

🐬 The flippening we didn't expect is almost here

The flippening is a meme to describe when the total market cap of Ethereum will “flip” that of Bitcoin - hence the name. It can also be used to joke when another blockchain will flip Ethereum and other metrics. It holds little substance but makes for a fun joke. 

That's why we're using it to explain the growth of Layer 2s! 

2022 has been labeled as Layer 2 22, or L2 '22. There's a reason for that, as activity across all Layer 2 scaling solutions has exploded. So much so that there are almost more transactions happening on Layer 2s than on Layer 1.

It's the flippening we didn't expect. But, very much welcome.

👾 Reddit onboarded millions into crypto

Reddit launched digital collectibles for their most valued users. Buying them was easy. There was no complexity, and it left buyers happy with the experience. 

But, unlike other digital collectibles, like CS:GO skins, these were NFTs! 

The value of these collectibles soared, and gave many a nice return on their investment. More importantly, over 3 million people were easily onboarded into crypto. 

It teaches us a lesson that by making crypto easy and abstracting the complexity away, we can bring the next wave of users into self-custody and crypto. Otherwise, they'll never leave centralized solutions. And we don't want that. 

📚 What we’re reading

We usually share a few pieces that we read during the week. But there was a standout piece that everyone should read - Matt Levine's The Crypto Story. 

Over 40,000 words, Matt absolutely nails crypto.

"I like finance. I think it’s interesting. And if you like finance—if you like understanding the structures that people build to organize economic reality—crypto is amazing. It’s a laboratory for financial intuitions.”

Give it a read, and let us know what you think. 

💭 What’s happening at Argent 

This week we made a massive improvement to Argent X - our browser wallet for StarkNet - that increased the speed of the wallet by 3X, all without compromising on security.

But that’s not all.

With the launch of zkSync 2.0, we sent out an explainer on what this update is and how it impacts you. If you missed it, zkSync 2.0 is an important milestone as it brings smart contracts to the network. However, access is limited to only the zkSync team and will gradually roll out to developers and users after rigorous testing.

🤔 Smaller but interesting things

Here are a few smaller things we’ve found interesting this week:

Marketing In The Bera And Beyond

An intro to token comp structures and tax considerations (mostly for US employers) 

The surprising maturity of the crypto-rave crowd

Anonymous Message Board Tutorial

Aave v2 deployed on StarkNet

The Premier League is lining up a £30m-a-year digital collectibles deal with Sorare