Creator: zhou, ChainCatcher
The cryptocurrency pockets market in 2025 is witnessing a brutal battle for market share.
Because the Meme coin craze subsided, high-frequency buying and selling customers started flocking to exchange-affiliated wallets with decrease charges and stronger incentives. Confronted with the closed ecosystem of exchanges, the survival house for impartial gamers is being repeatedly squeezed.
Towards this backdrop, Phantom’s efficiency has attracted consideration. At the start of the 12 months, it raised $150 million, pushing its valuation to $3 billion. Because the fourth quarter, the venture has launched its personal stablecoin CASH, a prediction market platform, and a crypto debit card, searching for new progress factors past its buying and selling enterprise.
With a valuation of three billion, it began with Solana and has expanded into a number of chains.
Wanting again at Phantom’s growth historical past, the Solana ecosystem was simply rising in 2021, and the on-chain infrastructure was nonetheless incomplete. Conventional crypto wallets reminiscent of MetaMask primarily assist the Ethereum ecosystem and lack compatibility with different chains, leading to sure shortcomings in consumer expertise.
Sometimes, when making a pockets, customers should manually write down a seed phrase of 12 or 24 phrases. As soon as the secret’s misplaced, the belongings will likely be completely unrecoverable, which many potential customers discover tedious and dangerous.
Phantom’s three founders had beforehand labored at 0x Labs (an Ethereum DeFi infrastructure venture) for a few years. They seized this chance, selecting to begin with Solana and create a pockets with a easy interface and intuitive operation. Its core innovation lies in optimizing the backup course of: offering a number of easy strategies reminiscent of e mail login, biometrics, and encrypted cloud backup to assist exchange manually copying seed phrases, considerably decreasing the barrier to entry for freshmen.
In April 2021, the Phantom browser extension was launched, and inside months, its consumer base surpassed a million, changing into the popular selection for Solana customers. In line with RootData, in July of the identical 12 months, Phantom, nonetheless in its testing part, secured $9 million in Collection A funding led by a16z; in January 2022, Paradigm led a $109 million Collection B funding spherical, valuing the corporate at $1.2 billion; and by early 2025, Paradigm and Sequoia Capital once more led a $150 million funding, pushing its valuation to $3 billion.
Because it expanded, Phantom subsequently developed a multi-chain footprint, supporting a number of public chains together with Ethereum, Polygon, Bitcoin, Base, and Sui, making an attempt to shed its “Solana-only pockets” label. Nonetheless, Phantom at the moment doesn’t natively assist BNB Chain, and a few customers have beforehand complained that Phantom helps ETH however not BNB Chain, inflicting delays in receiving airdrops.
The fun and sorrows of 2025
2025 will likely be a 12 months of extremes for Phantom: on one hand, it should see fast breakthroughs in consumer base and product growth, and alternatively, its buying and selling quantity share will likely be considerably eroded by exchange-affiliated wallets.
Particularly, consumer progress is a standout function. Phantom’s month-to-month energetic customers grew from 15 million at the start of the 12 months to just about 20 million by the top, rating among the many high in progress fee amongst impartial wallets, particularly with important consumer progress in rising markets reminiscent of India and Nigeria.
In the meantime, Phantom’s belongings below administration have exceeded $25 billion, with peak weekly earnings reaching $44 million. Its annual income as soon as surpassed that of MetaMask, and Phantom’s cumulative income is at the moment near $570 million.
Nonetheless, considerations about buying and selling quantity are equally outstanding. In line with knowledge from Dune Analytics, Phantom’s share of the embedded swap market throughout your entire community fell from almost 10% at the start of the 12 months to 2.3% in Could, and additional shrank to solely 0.5% by the top of the 12 months. In the meantime, exchange-affiliated wallets have attracted numerous high-frequency buying and selling customers with their price benefits, fast new product launches, and beneficiant airdrop subsidies. Presently, Binance Pockets accounts for almost 70%, and OKX (pockets + routing API) mixed accounts for over 20%.
The market’s greater concern about Phantom lies in its deep dependence on Solana. Information exhibits that 97% of Phantom’s swap transactions happen on Solana, whereas Solana’s whole worth locked (TVL) has fallen by greater than 34% from its peak of $13.22 billion on September 14th, at the moment standing at a six-month low of $8.67 billion. This has straight dragged down Phantom’s core buying and selling metrics.
Confronted with these pressures, Phantom has wager its assets on new merchandise in an try and open up a second progress curve.
On the product stage, Phantom has launched a collection of differentiated options:
- In July, it was built-in with Hyperliquid perpetual contracts, and inside simply 16 days of its launch, it drove roughly $1.8 billion in buying and selling quantity and generated almost $930,000 in income by means of builder codes.
- In August, the corporate additional solidified its protection of segmented transaction wants by buying Solsniper, a meme coin monitoring device, and SimpleHash, an NFT knowledge platform.
- CASH, the native stablecoin launched on the finish of September, shortly surpassed $100 million in provide, with a peak of over 160,000 transactions in November. Its core competitiveness lies in fee-free P2P transfers and accompanying lending rewards.
- The Phantom Money debit card, which was first launched in the USA in December, permits customers to make purchases straight utilizing on-chain stablecoins and is suitable with mainstream cellular cost strategies reminiscent of Apple Pay and Google Pay.
- On December 12, it was introduced {that a} prediction market platform was launched, with the Kalshi prediction market built-in into the pockets, which is at the moment open to eligible customers;
- On the similar time, a free SDK, “Phantom Join,” was launched, permitting customers to seamlessly entry completely different web3 purposes with the identical account, additional decreasing the onboarding threshold for builders and customers.
Amongst them, probably the most consideration has been targeted on debit playing cards and CASH stablecoins, which Phantom is making an attempt to make use of to unravel the “final mile” downside of cryptocurrency consumption.
Phantom CEO Brandon Millman has publicly said that within the quick time period, there will likely be no new token issuance, no IPO, and no self-built blockchain. All efforts will likely be targeted on refining the product and making the pockets a monetary device that strange individuals can use. He believes that the final word winner within the pockets market is not going to be who has the biggest transaction quantity, however who brings crypto into on a regular basis funds first.
Nonetheless, the “final mile” of cryptocurrency funds is just not a simple street, and Phantom is just not the primary impartial non-custodial pockets to launch a debit card.
Previous to this, MetaMask partnered with Mastercard, Baanx, and CompoSecure in Q2 of 2025 to launch the MetaMask Card, which helps real-time conversion of cryptocurrency to fiat forex for spending and rollout within the EU, UK, Latin America, and different areas. MetaMask’s card has wider protection and launched earlier, however it’s restricted by the Ethereum and Linea networks, leading to increased charges and slower speeds, resulting in consumer suggestions that it’s “handy however not often used.”
In distinction, Phantom’s debit card entered the market later and is at the moment solely obtainable on a small scale in the USA; its precise adoption stays to be seen. Theoretically, leveraging Solana’s low charges, it could be extra aggressive in fee-sensitive rising markets, but it surely nonetheless lags considerably behind MetaMask Card when it comes to international protection and service provider acceptance.
When it comes to stablecoins, if CASH can not type a sustained community impact, it could observe within the footsteps of different wallet-native stablecoins that “opened excessive and closed low.” For instance, MetaMask’s native stablecoin mUSD noticed its provide shortly exceed $100 million after its launch, but it surely dropped to about $25 million in lower than two months.
Conclusion
Because the meme craze fades, transaction quantity is not a dependable aggressive benefit, and impartial wallets should return to the essence of economic providers.
Total, Phantom integrates Hyperliquid perpetual contracts and Kalshi prediction markets on the buying and selling aspect to retain high-end customers; on the patron aspect, it bets on CASH stablecoins and debit playing cards, making an attempt to carry on-chain belongings into on a regular basis life.
This dual-track strategy of “buying and selling derivatives + client funds” is Phantom’s self-redemption below the stress of the Matthew impact within the pockets trade. It’s not solely on the lookout for a second progress curve, but additionally defining the endgame of impartial wallets.
