15 months later, what has changed since November 2021? Interview with the CEO of Phantom Wallet
15 months later, what has changed since November 2021? Interview with the CEO of Phantom Wallet
A lot can happen in one and a half years.
The cryptocurrency market has gone through a literal roller coaster ride in terms of price, regulations and overall development.
stock exchanges imploded, billions -in ecosystems collapsed, supervisory authorities now intervene more than ever, banks close and so on. And it almost seems as if the time flies.
2021, Cryptopotato visited Solana's Breakpoint in Lisbon and had the opportunity to speak to Brandon Millman-the CEO of the greatest self-custody wallet on Solana-Phantom. About 15 months later we talked to him again - this time during ETH Denver in 2023.
Why is a Solana-Native Wallet at ETH Denver? Phantom is currently in its multichain beta and adds both Ethereum and Polygon chains to his wallet experience. Brandon and his team, former 0x engineers, return to the Ethereum community to present Phantoms Wallet.
we dive.
a whirlpool of ups and downs: from 2021 to 2023
f: So the last time we talked, was during Breakpoint in Lisbon in 2021. It can be said with certainty that the industry is far from as far as it was back then. Let us immerse yourself - what has changed for you since then?
a: In November 2021, the crypto market capitalization reached an all-time high. It was an amazing year for the entire crypto industry. One thing that was very interesting was that the NFT market on Solana really started driving in 2022. I think he started in August 2021 and then went into full swing in 2022.
by August or September 2022 there were many NFT activities on Solana (in front of the FTX scandal)-a large part of it from Magic Eden. Together with Phantom, this delivered an unrivaled NFT experience and contributed to considerable growth.
What we noticed was that Solana attracted a completely different population group than Ethereum. There were not many overlaps-Solana had a much younger audience, which fit perfectly with new NFT projects that were more affordable and more accessible. Not to mention that this group of collectors was mainly based in the USA.
Obviously there was the FTX debacle towards the end of the year. Due to the proximity of FTX to the Solana ecosystem, some projects got into the explosion radius. At the same time, FTX caused a massive escape from centralized stock exchanges to non-custodial products. It was an interesting dichotomy that did not go so well on the one hand, but we got a great influx of people who fled not only from FTX, but also from other centralized stock exchanges - everyone was afraid.
f: Where did the FTX collapse?
a: I was in Lisbon for Breakpoint 2022. It was such a great conference - so many developers and builder, and she was really packed with great things. The news came when I was back on the plane.
First I didn't understand - there was a tweet from SBF about Binance's strategic buyout, and I didn't understand what I read - I thought: "Oh, that's crazy, Binance buys ftx?" But then more news came out and I started to worry about the entire industry. FTX was such a prominent personality of public life in the mainstream crypto.
In general, I was glad that the United States did not react completely reflexively when it comes to regulation. I thought the government would try to shut down our entire industry immediately.Solana's collapse and his unexpected surprises
f: Solana fell from one of the fastest growing ecosystems in 2022 after the scandal with FTX and burned down. How has the community changed since then? What is the biggest difference you noticed?
a: The Solana community was really resistant. There is a very strong, real core that is very loyal and remained. The developer activity continued.
But in general, people of Solana remain loyal. Many competing layer-offs came out, and some people went, but the majority of people stayed.
departure according to Ethereum and Polygon: New ways for Phantom Wallet
f: Did you think about adding support for other networks after the bear market?
a: Phantom currently has a multi-chain wallet extension and a mobile app in the beta version with the support of Solana, Ethereum and Polygon-everything under one app. It is currently used by 70,000 beta testers and we are approaching the goal of introducing it publicly within the next month.
As soon as this is out, Phantom becomes the metamask replacement for Ethereum and Polygon. This is the configuration in which we will be when we start, and we always evaluate the other ecosystems and chains.
f: What would your advantage over Metamask?
a: I would say we have three different core advantages.
As a multichain-first wallet, users can use Solana, Ethereum and Polygon at the same time without having to change the network. They are connected to everyone at the same time and can see an aggregated view of all assets.
Phantom is also characterized by security functions. We spend a lot of time with the development of functions such as transaction simulation before you sign something, automated NFT spam filtering-such as working email spam filters, and many others.
Finally, we make sure that our wallet has the best possible NFT functions-the above-mentioned safety functions and also the sale of NFTs directly from the app, extensive metadata via minimum price, purchase price and so on.
When Phantom Wallet token and what is the next big trend?
f: How did the wider decline in market have a total of the registrations?
a: During this bear market period, the user base becomes a quite zero -sum game - there are not many new users, but there are many the same users from all ecosystems. We will mainly focus on supplying existing users.
f: We asked you that in Lisbon at the time, but I can't ask it again - when to phantom token?
a: We want to create longevity and it is not clear how a token matches it. I think the token is more risk than reward at the moment, so it is currently not on our roadmap.
f: Where will the big next trend come from?
a: It is interesting that many trends almost always come out of nowhere. There are these very crypto-native ideas that are very popular. People are enthusiastic about web3 gaming. I'm still waiting for what will happen.
I could see more niche crypto games, maybe something with a token-this is very popular-something more experimental. That would be my guess.
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