Phantom wallet, supporting Solana, raises $9 million in Series A funding
Phantom, a crypto wallet with a browser extension that currently supports the Solana blockchain, has raised $9 million in its Series A funding round.
This investing round was led by Andreesen Horowitz (A16z) along with other investors like Variant Fund, Solana Foundation, and others. It is also believed that other angel investors including Coinbase investor, Garry Tan, and investors from Compound and Ethereum foundation also participated in this round of funding.
The wallet plans to expand to other networks including Ethereum and other layers 2 solutions like Polygon as it continues to grow and expand and it is believed this multi-chain support in the wallet would be available by the end of the year.
Phantom CEO Brandon Millman said, “We are currently engaging with and evaluating several layer-two solutions, and sidechains, including Polygon, Arbitrum, Optimism, and ZK Sync”.
The company also plans to continue development within the Solana ecosystem and provide more features and functions for its users as it continues to build its products and associated features. These include in-wallet staking, token swapper, and an asset bridge that will help users to switch assets between Ethereum and Solana.
The company’s revenue model revolves around monetizing the token swapper and also looking to collect some revenue from the staking features as well though it believes NFTs could also bring in revenue in the future. The wallet is also looking to launch its mobile version in the coming months.
“We are moving to more and more of a multi-chain world … Users need a way to seamlessly operate applications that live across these different networks, and we believe the wallet is the best place to solve this unique challenge,” Millman said.
Multi-chain support would become key for all wallets and other related dapps in the future as more and more blockchains appear on the horizon and users would not want to be restricted to a specific token or a blockchain in their usage. It is important that the wallets not only bring in multi-chain support but also make it as user-friendly as possible to help the different blockchains to grow and this is very important for the blockchain ecosystem as a whole.
With Solana entering the picture as a major blockchain in recent times, one of its priorities would be to bring multi-chain support in as many wallets as possible, especially between Solana and Ethereum so that users are comfortable using both and this would in turn help to push up their usage.
