Phantom wallet: what it is, how it works and who makes it

Who makes Phantom

Phantom is built by Phantom Technologies, Inc., the company named as the contracting party in Phantom's terms of use (last updated 17 March 2026). The terms are governed by California law and, for users in the United States and Canada, send disputes to binding individual arbitration unless you opt out in writing within 30 days of first accepting them.

Phantom's about page says the project started in January 2021 with a group of engineers, designers and former founders, and lists Brandon Millman as CEO, Francesco Agosti as CTO and Chris Kalani as CPO. The same page records a $9 million Series A in July 2021 from investors including a16z, Variant and Jump Capital, and a $150 million Series C in January 2025, co-led by Sequoia Capital and Paradigm at a $3 billion valuation. Phantom's homepage cites more than 20 million users; that figure is the company's own, is undated, and gives no definition of a user.

What Phantom is and what it does

Phantom is a self-custodial crypto wallet that runs as a mobile app for iOS and Android and as a browser extension for Chrome, Brave and Edge, according to its download page. It started on Solana and now supports several networks. Phantom's help center lists these as currently supported:

• Solana (always on; it cannot be switched off in settings)
• Ethereum, Base, Polygon and BNB Chain
• Bitcoin, using Native SegWit and Taproot addresses
• HyperEVM, Robinhood Chain and Arc

Phantom ended support for the Sui network on 24 September 2026, so Sui assets can no longer be viewed, sent or swapped in the app. Older guides that still list Sui are out of date.

Around the core wallet, Phantom has added features that work differently from plain self-custody, and several are limited by country:

• Swaps and bridging: in-app token swaps on supported networks, plus cross-chain swaps routed through bridge providers that Phantom names as LI.FI, Relay, deBridge and Garden.
• Perps: perpetual futures executed on Hyperliquid, with a separate perps balance.
• Cash account: a dollar balance held in CASH, a stablecoin, with card funding, bank transfers and a Visa debit card for eligible US users.
• Prediction markets and tokenized stocks: offered in some regions only.
• Terminal: a desktop trading interface at trade.phantom.com.

How a Phantom wallet works

When you create a wallet, Phantom generates the keys for each supported network from one Secret Recovery Phrase. Anyone who has that phrase or a private key controls the wallet, and Phantom's terms say the company does not store your authentication method and cannot restore access if you lose it. Our guide to backing up a seed phrase covers storage options.

Phantom also offers wallets created by signing in with a Google or Apple account. These work differently, and the difference matters for custody:

• Phantom's help center says such wallets are powered by Phantom KMS, which stores the wallet keys in secure enclaves rather than on your device. For that reason the Show Private Key option is not available, though a recovery phrase can still be exported.
• Restoring the wallet on a new device uses your Google or Apple account and, where set, a four-digit PIN. After seven wrong PIN attempts the encrypted backup on that device is deleted, and recovery then depends on another signed-in device or a previously exported recovery phrase.
• You cannot change the Google or Apple account linked to the wallet.

Exporting and safely storing the recovery phrase is the step that keeps a social-login wallet from depending on one account and one PIN. For a general background on how software wallets differ from offline devices, see hot vs cold wallets explained.

Phantom fees

Holding, sending and receiving crypto in Phantom carries only the network's own fee. The charges Phantom itself sets are attached to swaps, perps and the Cash account. These figures come from Phantom's help center as of 1 November 2026, and the terms say fees may change without notice.

As a worked example, swapping the equivalent of $500 of one token for another on the same network costs a $4.25 Phantom fee (0.85%), plus the network fee and any price impact from the trading pool. Cross-chain swaps and Robinhood Chain swaps may require a minimum of about $2 in value.

Cash account and the CASH stablecoin

Phantom's help center describes the Cash account as a Solana wallet linked to your Phantom profile, at its own address separate from your main wallet, holding CASH, a stablecoin pegged to the US dollar. Phantom says the CASH is always held onchain. The token itself is issued by Bridge, the Stripe-owned stablecoin company: Bridge's reserves page lists CASH as a fully backed dollar stablecoin it issues, and a Bridge case study says Phantom became the first business to launch a stablecoin on its Open Issuance platform, in September 2025. The reserves snapshot dated 1 November 2026 shows 128,963,902 CASH in circulation against $129.6 million of reserves, about 94% in Treasuries (including money-market funds) and 6% in cash, for a stated collateralization of 100.48%. Bridge lists Solana and HyperEVM as the token's networks.

That arrangement adds parties a plain wallet does not have. Holding CASH means relying on Bridge's reserves and redemption, as with any fiat-backed stablecoin; our guide on how to assess a stablecoin explains what to check. Card funding, bank transfers and the debit card require identity verification through Stripe's Link, and Phantom's homepage says the prepaid Visa card is issued by Lead Bank with Bridge Ventures LLC managing the card program. Phantom also states that it is not a bank.

Countries and feature restrictions

The wallet itself is available widely, but Phantom's terms bar nationals and residents of Cuba, Iran, North Korea and Sudan, other sanctioned regions, and people on prohibited-party lists. Individual features have their own limits. Phantom's feature-availability page lists:

If a feature is blocked where you are, Phantom shows a notice in the app rather than hiding the wallet.

Security model and risks

Phantom's terms state that it is not a custodian of your wallet or the assets in it, and that it cannot freeze, cancel or modify a transaction. That cuts both ways: no one can seize the funds, but no one can reverse a mistaken or malicious transfer either. Phantom's security page describes scam detection that flags malicious transactions, an open-source phishing blocklist, published audit reports and a bug bounty paying up to $50,000 for vulnerabilities that could lead to loss of user funds. It does not name the auditors on that page or say that the wallet code itself is open source.

Hardware signing is limited to Ledger. Phantom's support list covers the Nano X, Stax and Flex over Bluetooth on mobile, and the Nano S, Nano S Plus, Stax and Flex over a cable in the extension. It lists Ledger Nano Gen5, Trezor and Tangem devices as unsupported, and perps cannot be traded from a Ledger account.

The specific risks sit in the add-on products. Perps can lose all the margin committed to a position, and Phantom warns that liquidations use the mark price, which can differ from the chart. The perps balance lives on Hyperliquid, not in your Solana wallet; see our Hyperliquid profile for how that venue works. Unsolicited tokens that appear in a wallet are a common lure, and Phantom says it will never ask you to claim a reward or connect your wallet to a third-party site. Our guide to wallet scams and phishing covers the usual patterns.

Phantom is scored separately in our Phantom review under the published wallet criteria; this profile describes the product and does not grade it.