Solana Wallet Phantom Raises $109M to Rival MetaMask

The institution gathering Solana’s apical crypto wallet is present worthy $1.2 billion, Phantom announced Monday.

Crypto task steadfast Paradigm led a $109 concern successful Phantom, CEO Brandon Millman said. It was not instantly wide who other joined the headdress table, oregon what percent equity they took successful the upstart firm, whose main merchandise is simply a Chromium browser plugin.

The wallet is going mobile, too: On Monday, the institution debuted its iOS app. Millman expects his 20-odd squad to vessel an Android offering aboriginal this year, pursuing done connected a ngo to get Solana’s astir widely-used crypto wallet successful people’s pockets.

Phantom’s hyper-popular non-custodial work has go astir captious infrastructure for Solana-based decentralized finance; Millman claimed to bid “at slightest 90%” marketplace share. (CoinDesk could not independently verify this figure.)

It’s managed to bash truthful successful a alternatively unorthodox way. In an manufacture marked by open-source philosophies, Phantom, a backstage company, keeps wallet codification nether wraps. Even arsenic its rival wallets fto their doors plaything open, Phantom’s stay shut.

Millman said Phantom “definitely has aspirations” to spell open-source but “it has been hard to prioritize.” It hasn’t yet owed to a premix of operational, applicable and competitory considerations, helium said. Once that “pandora’s box” is unfastened it volition beryllium intolerable to spell back.

“Once it's open-source, there’s this implicit anticipation astir responding to radical who are leaving issues connected the GitHub repo, radical who are submitting propulsion requests, wanting to get features into the wallet,” helium said. “We don’t privation to commencement doing those things rather yet.”

Plus, helium said, the 2 cardinal monthly progressive users don’t look overly bothered by Phantom’s closed-source code.

But influential forces successful Solana are irked. One expert astatine a salient task superior steadfast said helium continues to usage Phantom lone due to the fact that there’s nary amended option. He pledged to wantonness Phantom arsenic soon arsenic a “decent” open-source alternate comes along.

Being “better than” is precisely however Phantom grew its unicorn horn. Millman and his Ethereum-native co-founders built Phantom to beryllium amended than MetaMask, the fashionable wallet owned by ConsenSys.

That program shifted erstwhile Phantom settled connected Solana, wherever MetaMask, an EVM-compatible wallet, does not play. But the sentiment remained a driving unit down Phantom’s development.

“We primitively were trying to determination toward that multi-chain part past year, but chose to treble down connected Solana due to the fact that of each the maturation that we were seeing, “ Millman said, noting “we’re cautiously considering the determination to the EVM ecosystem benignant of this year.”

Millman said Series B investors bought into Phantom’s multi-chain ambitions. They besides signed connected earlier the crypto market’s 2022 dip.

Phantom already has the currency successful manus and plans to spell connected a hiring spree arsenic its wallet ambitions grow. Millman, who was an Ethereum developer for years earlier helium got rusty, said helium knew what it’s similar to codification done a carnivore market. Having a currency stash surely helps.

“We conscionable privation to fastener successful the wealth to marque definite that we were protected successful a downturn arsenic well,” helium said.