Phantom Solana Wallet adds support for Ethereum and Polygon

Phantom, the popular self-storage wallet for Solana-based decentralized applications and NFTsannounced today that it will add support for rival blockchains Ethereum and Polygon for the desktop, iOS and Android apps.

The company argues that a user-friendly wallet is essential as an alternative to centralized exchanges and companies that handle sensitive user data.

“We are excited to bring the Phantom experience to the broader Web3 community,” Brandon Millman, CEO and co-founder of Phantom, said in a statement.

The goal, the company says, is to provide the ability to interact with the three largest blockchain ecosystems in one place and address critical usability and securities challenges in the digital collectibles market.

Phantom says it worked closely with Polygon to build a premium wallet experience, which the company claims has already brought in over 3 million active users. The company says it wants to make crypto more accessible to everyone by offering a simple, easy-to-use wallet with a unified interface for storing and viewing assets across multiple blockchains.

The company also says a private multi-chain beta will go live in the coming weeks, with a public launch later this year.

“The Polygon ecosystem has grown exponentially, and we’re excited to bring more people into the Web3 ecosystem,” said Ryan Wyatt, CEO of Polygon Studios. “Working with Phantom will allow us to deliver a feature-rich wallet ready for regular consumers to use when interacting with apps powered by Polygon.”

Launched in 2021, Phantom was co-founded by Brandon Millman, Chris Kalani and Francesco Agosti, who also worked on projects for 0x, Twitter, Facebook and Matcha respectively.

The Phantom wallet already allows Solana developers, users and collectors to interact with the decentralized economy (DeFi) protocols and non-fungible tokens (NFT).

Agosti spoke with Decrypt at 0xpo Crossroads in November and said the idea for Phantom came from frustration with using the popular MetaMask wallet.

“[It was] frustration with Metamask, and frustration with trying to build consumer-friendly apps on Ethereum,” Agosti said. “The big elephant in the room has always been transactions [on Ethereum] and can this chain actually handle regular usage and millions of users.”

Agosti said that seeing the Solana blockchain’s speed, low cost and scalability potential helped convince the team to build on the proof-of-stake blockchain that many considered an “Ethereum killer.”

But Solana’s dominance among proof-of-stake blockchains ended when the Ethereum merger last summer changed the second largest blockchain from proof-of-stake to proof-of-stake. Naturally, the Phantom would have to change with the times.

“Across all blockchain ecosystems and Web3 use cases, self-storage is now more important than ever,” Millman said. “We bring everything crypto users need in one place while offering best-in-class user experience and security.”