Solana Wallet App Phantom Hits Unicorn Status With Series B Funding

In the latest Series B funding round, the Phantom wallet has raised a total of $109 million funding round on a $1.2 billion valuation. 

Paradigm Leads Phantom’s Series B

As one of the premier wallet apps for the Solana ecosystem, Phantom has had a successful Series A funding round as well, where it raised a total of $9 million from investment giant Andreesen Horowitz. 6 months later, the app has definitely upped the ante with a $100+ million round led by Paradigm in its Series B funding. During the Series A funding, the startup had 40,000 active users. Now, they have 2.1 million, with CEO Brandon Millman noting that the company has been consistently onboarding about 100,000 users per week.

With Solana being interpreted as the Ethereum killer and pulling investor and developer attention, Phantom is also reaping the benefits. The latest funding round was led by Paradigm on a $1.2 billion valuation.  

Wallet Code Still Under Wraps

The non-custodial wallet has become a critical component of the Solana DeFi, by essentially keeping its wallet code hidden. CEO Millman has pointed out the challenges of going open-source, which he claims is definitely on the charts for the wallet app. 

He said, 

“Once it’s open-source, there’s this implicit expectation around responding to people who are leaving issues on the GitHub repo, people who are submitting pull requests, wanting to get features into the wallet. We don’t want to start doing those things quite yet.”

Phantom’s Multi-Chain Plans

Initially, the app was created to overtake MetaMask, the popular wallet owned by ConsenSys. However, instead of going multi-chain, the Phantom project settled on Solana to cash in on all the attention the network was receiving as a counter to Ethereum. Millman has stated that the Phantom app is considering a move to the EVM ecosystem this year. Even though multi-chain compatibility will bring in new opportunities, the Phantom team will definitely struggle with the challenges of the multiple ecosystems, especially since there are only 20 employees on board.

However, the latest funding raised will definitely help the team scale up and support its multi-chain plans. According to Millman, the Series B participants were drawn in by Phantom’s multi-chain ambitions and had signed on before the 2022 crypto market dip. Phantom already has received the capital from the funding and is planning to go on a hiring spree soon. 

Disclaimer: This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.