Solana-Based Phantom Wallet Hits Unicorn Status With $1.2 Billion Valuation

After securing $109 million in Series B funding spearheaded by Paradigm, non-custodial crypto wallet Phantom has bumped its valuation to $1.2 billion, bagging unicorn status, Tuesday. 

Paradigm CEO Brandon Millman said that the firm would utilize the funding to upgrade its cross-platform expansion, bring better user experience, and initiate app discovery to Phantom. As the platform expands, it is also expected that it would scale up its team with more diverse and strategic hires.

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Phantom is one of the wallet apps for the ever-innovating Solana tech ecosystem. Over the past few months, Solana has garnered the attention of investors and developers of its Ethereum despite being new and volatile. This is the result of the recent cryptocurrency crash which affected the said investors of the rival currency.

Ultimately, Phantom’s next goal is to venture into multi-chain systems and additional blockchain compatible with Ethereum’s EVM stack, aside from Solana. 

Future Innovations

Phantom also announced that it will make its wallet even more accessible by making it available on mobile devices, in addition to other advancements.

The company launched its iOS app on Monday, which is in line with the app’s mission to make Solana’s most popular wallet more widely available to the general public.

“It’s amazing to see the expansive growth that has happened in just under a year since beta launch,” Millman said. “Phantom’s user-friendly design and ease of use is helping us become a Web3 wallet for the masses.” 

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Phantom, in addition to launching their mobile application, hopes to develop cross-platform entry points for the general public that will be integrated with blockchain applications.

This means that along with the extended versatility, it will also deal with multiple and complex ecosystems, which Phantom is gearing up for with its enhanced funding.

Growing, Growing

From 40,000 active users, the startup company now has 2.1 million and about 100,000 users onboarding every week.

Millman also mentioned their aspirations of going open-source though he admits it’s not easy. 

According to JPMorgan’s analysts, Solana experienced a period in which it was gaining market share from Ethereum with NFTs, which reached a market capitalization of more than $1 billion last month.

SOL trading at $94 | Source: SOLUSD on TradingView.com

Currently, Phantom has helped use 112.4 million SOL ($10.4 billion), swap $1.37 billion in tokens and deliver 55.1 million NFT, DeFI and app transactions.

Phantom’s future looks even brighter as it heads into 2022, thanks to its user-friendly onboarding process, multi-chain support, widely speculated open-sourcing, and cutting-edge payment features and mobile support, among other attributes.

Featured image from ChainDebrief, chart from TradingView.com