Solana: Phantom Announces $150 Million Investment from Sequoia and Paradigm
Phantom announced on X that it has received a new funding injection, securing $150 million in Series C financing at a valuation of $3 billion. This new round of funding was co-led by Sequoia and Paradigm. Launched in 2021, Phantom has reportedly soared to the top of the App Store download charts, with many new investors actively participating in funding.
Phantom disclosed data indicating 15 million monthly active users, $20 billion in annual swaps, an average of twelve app openings per user per day, along with 850 million on-chain transactions and $25 billion in self-custodied assets. It emphasized that active users, transaction revenue, and transaction volume in November and December of last year were several times higher than the combined totals of MetaMask and Coinbase Wallet. Phantom started by developing a Solana wallet and now supports cross-chain transactions for Ethereum and Polygon.
Founder Brandon Millman stated in a public post that the acquisition of Bitski and Blowfish aims to create a more secure platform for the general public, with the new funds being used to continue technology development and acquire other innovative tech teams. Before founding Phantom, Brandon Millman was an engineer at Twitter (X), where he developed search, recommendation, and social features, and later led the Ox development team in building a decentralized exchange.
Phantom’s Next Funding Will Focus on Building a Global Consumer Finance Platform
Brandon Millman expressed that Phantom’s goal is to make it easier for everyone to access the platform, making it more intuitive and secure. The new round of funding will allow Phantom to invest further in innovation and modernize consumer finance.
Phantom Aims to Accelerate Cryptocurrency Adoption
Phantom plans to continuously invest the new funds in technology and is preparing to build the next generation of consumer finance platforms. In 2024, Phantom acquired Bitski and Blowfish, with the objective of establishing infrastructure and ensuring the security of cryptocurrencies. Phantom intends to continue building strategic partnerships to create infrastructure that leads to mainstream consumer finance. New features will further revolve around the “social discovery” function for 3.8 million “user domains” (Usernames).
What Are Bitski and Blowfish?
Bitski is an embedded wallets provider co-founded by Donnie Dinch, Julian Tescher, and Patrick Tescher in 2016. It has previously developed Web 3 products for Adidas and the American Professional Football League and is strongly supported by A16z.
Blowfish provides users with secure authentication, previewing transaction information during use and offering security warnings to prevent fraud. Fabio Berger, co-founder and CEO of Blowfish, stated that directly embedded wallets can enhance user security in ways that independent companies cannot achieve.
Risk Warning
Investing in cryptocurrencies carries a high level of risk, with prices potentially experiencing significant volatility, and you may lose your entire principal. Please carefully assess the risks.
