Phantom Reseña

Phantom wallet review: the short answer

Phantom is a safe, well-run self-custody wallet for Solana and eight other networks. What costs its users money is a 0.85% swap fee and the scams built around the brand.

No source we checked confirms a breach of Phantom's own systems. One 2025 lawsuit alleges a flaw that exposed keys. It is now in individual arbitration, with no ruling on the merits.

We rechecked every fact in this Phantom wallet review against Phantom's help center, its terms, court and regulator records, and audit reports on 16 October 2026. Two things changed this year: Phantom dropped Sui and Monad, and it added BNB Chain, Arc and Robinhood Chain.

• Good fit: you hold or trade on Solana, you want one polished app for Solana, Ethereum, Base and Bitcoin, and you are happy to pair it with a Ledger for larger balances.
• Look elsewhere: you swap often and mind a 0.85% cut, you use Arbitrum or Optimism, you own a Trezor, or you need fully open-source code.

What is Phantom, and who owns it?

Phantom is a non-custodial crypto wallet built by Phantom Technologies, Inc., a private company in San Francisco. Brandon Millman (CEO), Francesco Agosti and Chris Kalani founded it in 2021.

It began as a Solana-only browser extension.

The money behind it is serious. Andreessen Horowitz led a $9 million Series A in July 2021. Paradigm led a $109 million Series B at a $1.2 billion valuation in January 2022, the same day the iOS app launched. In January 2025 Phantom raised $150 million at a $3 billion valuation in a Series C co-led by Sequoia Capital and Paradigm, with a16z crypto and Variant joining. We found no later funding round.

Scale numbers come from Phantom itself, so treat them as company claims. It reported 15 million monthly active users at the Series C and now says it serves more than 20 million users. The Block has called it Solana's biggest wallet, and Fortune placed it fifth on its 2026 Crypto 100 list.

Phantom grows partly by buying teams. It acquired Bitski (embedded wallets) and Blowfish (transaction security) in 2024, then SimpleHash and Solsniper in 2025. The Parallax and Ventuals teams joined in 2025 and June 2026.

Which blockchains does Phantom support in 2026?

Phantom supports nine networks as of October 2026: Solana, Ethereum, Base, Polygon, Bitcoin, HyperEVM, Robinhood Chain, Arc and BNB Chain. It ended support for Monad in August 2026 and for Sui in September 2026.

Arbitrum, Optimism, Avalanche, Unichain and Linea are not supported, and Phantom does not let you add a custom network by hand. If your activity lives on those chains, you will need a second, EVM-focused wallet such as Rabby or MetaMask.

The removals matter for a practical reason. When a wallet drops a network, your coins do not disappear. You just need a different app holding the same recovery phrase to move them. Phantom warned during both shutdowns that it will never offer to move assets for you, so any message promising that is a scam.

Is Phantom wallet safe?

Yes, for most people. Phantom is self-custodial, previews transactions before you sign them, and pays up to $100,000 for critical bugs. Its weak spots are closed-source code and an audit trail that ends in June 2024.

No source we found confirms a breach of its own systems. The one lawsuit alleging a key-exposure flaw has had no ruling on the merits.

How Phantom protects your keys

Phantom's terms say plainly that Phantom "is not a custodian of your Wallet or the Digital Assets held in your Wallet." For a standard wallet, the recovery phrase is created on your device and the keys stay there, protected by your password, Face ID or fingerprint. That design means Phantom cannot freeze your tokens. It also means nobody at Phantom can undo a transaction you signed.

Wallets created with a Google or Apple login work differently. They use a 4-digit PIN that Phantom tells you to treat like a recovery phrase, and Phantom's help center mentions some of these accounts being "migrated to Phantom KMS" without explaining the key model. If you want the clearest custody story, create the wallet with a recovery phrase instead.

Audits, bug bounty and open source

The open-source gap is the main criticism. Walletbeat, an independent wallet rating project, marks Phantom down for a proprietary licence and for an audit older than one year. It also reports that Phantom's built-in swap asks for an unlimited token approval by default without saying so before you sign. It is worth knowing, and you can revoke old approvals with Revoke.cash, which Phantom's help center links to.

Security features that matter day to day

• Transaction previews. Phantom simulates a transaction and shows what will leave and enter your wallet before you sign. Much of this came from Blowfish, the security firm Phantom bought in November 2024.
• Anti-spoofing guards. Phantom adds Lighthouse "guard instructions" so a transaction fails if the real outcome differs from the preview. Phantom says the Lighthouse program was audited by OtterSec.
• Scam warnings. It flags known malicious sites and accounts and lets you burn spam NFTs.
• Hardware support. You can sign with a Ledger, which keeps the keys off your computer and phone.
• A security team with outside ties. Phantom hired Clement Chen as head of security in October 2025 and joined Crypto ISAC, an industry threat-sharing group, as its first charter member.

Every Phantom security incident we could document

We list every incident we could document, including the ones that were not Phantom's fault.

The pattern is consistent. Every confirmed loss in this table went through phishing, fake apps, poisoned addresses, a compromised third-party library or another wallet, and none has been traced to a flaw in how Phantom stores keys. The Murphy case is the one open claim that Phantom's own software leaked keys, and no court has ruled on whether it did.

Is Phantom a cold wallet?

No. Phantom is a hot wallet: your keys sit on an internet-connected phone or browser. For cold storage, connect a Ledger. Phantom recommends this itself for high-value assets.

The Ledger support has limits. The browser extension works with the Nano S, Nano S Plus, Stax and Flex over a cable, and the mobile app works with the Nano X, Stax and Flex over Bluetooth. Phantom lists the new Ledger Nano Gen5 as unsupported, along with every Trezor and Tangem model. Ledger accounts also cannot use BNB Chain, perps or prediction markets. If you own a Trezor and hold SOL, Trezor's own site points you to Trezor Suite, Backpack or NuFi. Our Ledger review and Trezor review compare the two devices.

Is Phantom wallet legit, or a scam?

Phantom is a legitimate, venture-backed US company, and the app is safe to download from official channels. The scams are copies of Phantom: fake apps, fake support staff, fake emails and poisoned addresses that try to get your recovery phrase or a signature.

Phantom's own rules make most of them easy to spot:

• Phantom never sends direct messages first, never asks you to send funds, and only emails people who opened a support ticket; its marketing email comes from verified domains such as updates.phantom.com.
• Phantom has no Discord server. Any "Phantom support" on Discord is fake.
• Download only from phantom.com/download, the App Store or Google Play. The old phantom.app domain now redirects to phantom.com.
• There is no Phantom desktop app. Any Phantom .exe or .dmg file is malware.
• No real update, airdrop or "compliance check" will ever ask for your recovery phrase. Phantom said in January 2025 that it had no plans to launch a token, so treat any "Phantom token airdrop" as a lure.
• Copy addresses from the person you are paying, never from your transaction history, and check every character before you send.

If something has already gone wrong, Phantom's help center has pages for reporting a scam and for wallets that were drained. Move any remaining funds to a brand-new wallet with a new recovery phrase, because a drained wallet's phrase should be treated as public.

What fees does Phantom charge?

Phantom is free to download and hold. You pay a 0.85% Phantom fee on most in-app swaps, plus network fees, on-ramp providers' fees, and the funding and withdrawal fees on Phantom's Cash fee page.

Here is what the swap fee means in money. Swapping $1,000 of SOL into another Solana token costs $8.50 in Phantom's fee. Network fees and price impact come on top. A trader doing $5,000 of swaps a month pays about $510 a year to Phantom. Backpack says its wallet has charged zero fees on swaps and bridges across all its networks since March 2026.

Phantom also works with 19 outside providers for buying crypto, including MoonPay, Transak, Banxa, PayPal, Coinbase, Revolut and Stripe. Their prices differ by country and payment method, so compare the quotes Phantom shows before you pay.

How do you withdraw from Phantom to a bank account?

In the US (except New York), swap to Phantom's CASH stablecoin and withdraw to your bank by ACH from the Cash tab. Everywhere else, send your crypto to an exchange, sell it there, and withdraw from the exchange to your bank.

The US route inside the app:

1. Verify your identity for Phantom Cash (a one-time check run by Link, Stripe's identity service).
2. Swap the token you want to sell into CASH. Stablecoins such as USDC convert for free; other tokens pay the 0.85% swap fee.
3. Open Cash, choose Withdraw, then Bank. CASH converts 1:1 to dollars. Standard ACH is free; fast ACH costs $1.00 plus 0.75%.

The exchange route also works outside the US. Phantom's own guide lists exchanges such as Coinbase, Kraken, Binance, OKX and Gate. Copy the exchange's deposit address for the exact network you are sending on, send a small test amount first, then sell and withdraw. Phantom warns not to send CASH straight to an exchange, so swap it to USDC first. Our Coinbase review and Kraken review cover their withdrawal fees.

Does Phantom ask for ID or an SSN?

The wallet itself needs no ID: you can create it, hold, swap and send without verification. Phantom Cash's bank, card and funding features do need it. US users may be asked for a phone number, date of birth, address, Social Security number and a government ID, and Phantom does not accept an ITIN. Phantom says it only receives the result of the check, not your documents. Outside on-ramps run their own checks.

Does Phantom wallet report to the IRS?

Phantom says it does not issue tax forms such as 1099s, and its terms say it is not a broker. That does not make your activity invisible or untaxed.

Blockchains are public. US exchanges and other custodial brokers you sell through file Form 1099-DA for sales from 1 January 2025. We found no documentation on whether Bridge or Stripe report Phantom Cash or card activity.

What a US Phantom user needs to know:

• The Form 1040 question. The IRS asks whether, during the year, you received a digital asset as a reward, award or payment, or sold, exchanged or otherwise disposed of one. Swaps, sales and staking rewards mean "Yes". Only holding, or moving coins between your own wallets, usually means "No".
• Form 1099-DA. Brokers such as custodial exchanges report gross proceeds for sales on or after 1 January 2025 and cost basis for some sales from 1 January 2026. Non-custodial wallet software is not covered.
• The DeFi broker rule is gone. A 2024 rule that would have treated DeFi front ends as brokers was overturned by Congress, and Treasury published its removal on 11 July 2025.
• Staking is income. Under Revenue Ruling 2023-14, staking rewards are taxable income at fair market value when you gain control of them. That covers rewards from native SOL staking in Phantom.
• Records are on you. Phantom suggests exporting your history as CSV files from block explorers such as Solscan and Etherscan, or using tax software such as CoinLedger, CoinTracker, Summ or Awaken.

Our US crypto tax guide for 2026 covers rates and forms in more depth. This is general information, not tax advice.

Phantom Cash, the card, perps and prediction markets: who can use them?

Phantom Cash accounts are open worldwide, but bank transfers, withdrawals and the card are US-only and exclude New York. Perpetual futures trading is blocked in the US and the UK.

Phantom Cash runs on CASH, a dollar stablecoin on Solana that Phantom created with Bridge, Stripe's stablecoin company. Phantom announced it in September 2025 with a waitlist and early access, and opened it to all eligible US users on 31 March 2026. Phantom describes the Cash account as a self-custodial smart-contract wallet. Balances are not FDIC-insured.

The Phantom card is a virtual prepaid Visa for Apple Pay and Google Pay. Lead Bank has issued it, with Bridge running the program, and from 5 October 2026 Phantom is moving the program to Stripe and replacing old virtual cards automatically. There is no physical card yet. Spending is capped at $2,000 a day, rising to $5,000 after 30 days of history.

Perps launched in July 2025 on Hyperliquid's order books, with markets that now include stocks, commodities and earnings events. Phantom reported passing $50 billion in cumulative perps volume in October 2026. Leverage cuts both ways, and our perpetual futures explainer covers the risks.

Prediction markets moved from Kalshi (through DFlow) to World Prediction Markets for positions opened from 1 June 2026. In March 2026 the CFTC's Market Participants Division issued a no-action letter (Staff Letter 26-09): staff will not recommend enforcement against Phantom for not registering as an introducing broker when its software helps users trade through registered FCMs, introducing brokers and DCMs, subject to conditions. Phantom says that relief does not cover DeFi derivatives or tokenized prediction markets, so it does not open Phantom Perps or World markets to US users.

Phantom vs Backpack, Solflare and MetaMask

Pick Phantom for a polished Solana-first app with Bitcoin and EVM support. Pick Backpack if swap fees drive your choice, Solflare if you want a Solana specialist, and an EVM-focused wallet if you live on Ethereum layer 2s.

• Backpack, run by Armani Ferrante's team, says it charges zero fees on swaps and bridges on every network it supports (its post lists 14, including Solana, Sui and Aptos). Trezor lists it as a Solana app that works with Trezor devices, which Phantom does not.
• Solflare is a Solana-focused wallet. Its docs list Ledger and Keystone for the extension and do not mention Trezor, and Trezor's own Solana page does not list Solflare.
• MetaMask, a long-running EVM wallet, added native Solana support to its browser extension in May 2025 and native Bitcoin in December 2025. See our MetaMask review.
• Trust Wallet says it supports more than 100 blockchains. See our Trust Wallet review, or compare all options on our crypto wallets hub.

Should you use Phantom?

For most people active on Solana, yes. Phantom makes it easy to hold SOL and Solana tokens, connect to apps, stake and move into Ethereum, Base or Bitcoin from one place.

Its security record is good where it counts. Every confirmed loss we could trace ran through phishing, fake apps, poisoned addresses, third-party code or another wallet. The one lawsuit blaming Phantom's code has had no ruling on the merits, and Phantom pays up to $100,000 for bugs. Add a Ledger once your balance is worth protecting. Never type your recovery phrase anywhere except a fresh restore.

Think twice in three cases. Frequent traders will pay noticeably more than with a zero-fee wallet. Trezor owners and Arbitrum or Optimism users will hit hard limits. People who need audited, open code should note that the last public audit is from June 2024. We score Phantom on security, chain support, ease of use, pricing and transparency; see how we score wallets.

Sources

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