Phantom, a crypto pockets closely used within the Solana ecosystem, has seen its lively consumer base greater than triple over the previous 12 months, its CEO and co-founder Brandon Millman completely shared with Ztoog.
In January 2024, Phantom hit 3.2 million month-to-month lively customers (MAUs), up 220% from 1 million one 12 months in the past, and recorded 941,000 installs, 463.5% greater than 167,000 installs throughout the identical time-frame, Millman stated. “These numbers are essentially our peak” and outperformed utilization and metrics from the earlier crypto bull market in 2021 and early 2022, he added.
“The Jito and Jupiter airdrops were a huge turning point for the ecosystem,” Millman stated. “Solana has reached escape velocity and proved itself to be a first-class ecosystem. It’s the platform attracting some of the best builders in the world.”
Solana-focused decentralized finance (DeFi) Jito Network and decentralized aggregator Jupiter each did airdrops in late 2023 and early 2024, respectively, offering customers of their tasks with rewards, or tokens, basically as a “thank you” for utilizing their service.
When it rains, it pours
These airdrops, coupled with the latest Solana memecoin mania, may very well be why the ecosystem has seen a surge of each outdated and new customers.
“It’s a lot of DeFi activity but what that’s equating to is crypto wallets are becoming the new entry point to crypto,” Millman thinks. When a consumer first onboards to crypto, the everyday technique is to undergo centralized crypto exchanges like Coinbase, which he attributes to “word of mouth,” however now the world has modified, he thinks, “increasingly people are downloading a crypto wallet” to get began.
This entry level of wallets and on-chain purposes have gotten the “new thing people are trying to get access to when they want to use crypto,” Millman stated.
Aside from being a spot for folks to maintain and commerce their cryptocurrency, Phantom additionally goals to be a “safe access” for web3 experiences, Millman famous. During the Jupiter airdrop, by sharing hyperlinks on Phantom’s web site it helped drive 1.1 million visits to the Jupiter declare web site, in an effort to forestall folks from getting scammed by malicious hyperlinks, he added.
Growth over income
Phantom began in 2021 as a Solana-only crypto pockets, however has since expanded to present multichain assist for Ethereum, Polygon and Bitcoin as effectively. Now, the corporate has its sights on rising its consumer base because it seeks to grow to be the highest vacation spot for folks new to crypto and wallets.
“Right now, we’re in a focused growth stage. We’re not super focused on generating revenue, but we prefer to feed it back to the user growth. The more users that sign up, the more developers are attracted to building on the ecosystem, and the more applications and users we get. It’s like a flywheel and we’re looking to grow as fast as possible,” Millman stated.
Phantom makes cash the identical means most different wallets do: By offering in-app comfort options for swapping cryptocurrencies and charging a small price for them. The firm, which is backed by traders like Paradigm, Andreessen Horowitz, Jump Capital and Solana, additionally has a “strong balance sheet,” Millman stated, so it doesn’t have to focus a lot on income presently.
“We believe the future of wallets is multichain, just the way crypto exchanges have evolved. Coinbase started off as a Bitcoin-only exchange, then added support for Ethereum, and one thing led to another,” he stated. “No one can fathom a world where exchanges only have one coin. Wallets will follow the same path.”
While it’s nonetheless too early to anticipate the lots to self-custody their crypto property, the rise in utilization of crypto wallets factors to additional progress within the house. In the previous, on-chain apps have been too costly or sophisticated to use, however these airdrops and the ensuing inflow of customers present the advantage of composability, Millman added.
Crypto exchanges like Coinbase run a totally closed system, however on-chain techniques like Solana are open to builders to construct on prime of. So by buying and selling or staking property on exchanges, folks may doubtlessly miss out on rewards like airdrops, Millman famous.
And when you think about that crypto wallets let customers commerce cryptocurrencies, too, they grow to be extra engaging than exchanges as a result of in addition they present entry to on-chain perks. “DeFi applications are now incentivizing usage with airdrops, and the only way to get that is by downloading a wallet […] The intent of users and types of on-chain apps have grown and diversified, making wallets an entry point,” he stated.
Millman expects crypto pockets adoption to proceed rising as extra suppliers and the ecosystem deliver new options and discover new avenues. “There’s still a lot of sharp edges and foreign concepts, that’s for sure. Secret recovery phrases are the de-facto key management for wallets. But these are areas we’re going to innovate on this year, and we’re excited to show the next evolution of what it will look like.”
In the longer term, he expects crypto wallets to assist folks do extra than simply purchase, maintain and promote crypto. “It’s a window into a much richer world of interoperability.”