Phantom: Solana Crypto

You may have heard of Ethereum, a network infrastructure that recreates banking functions without banks. Instead, Ethereum Phantom wallet uses smart contracts. Solana provides the same service, only better—super low fees, and greatly faster transactions.

However, because these blockchain networks stand apart, each uses different crypto wallets. The best wallet to use with Solana is Phantom. Effectively, this wallet is your starting point for interacting with Solana, the so-called Ethereum-killer.

PHANTOM: SOLANA CRYPTO TRADING IN YOUR WEB BROWSER

There are many ways we can divide crypto wallets. For example, we can divide them by connectivity (cold vs. hot), by platform (hardware vs. software), or by ownership of your private key (custodial vs. non-custodial). Phantom wallet falls into the hot, software, non-custodial category, meaning the following:

• Non-custodial means that you didn’t give a third party the ownership of your wallet’s private key. For instance, when you create an account on a crypto exchange, this is a custodial wallet. Although it is convenient for fast crypto trading, giving a company your private key for a long period is a big no-no. As is often said in crypto, “not your keys, not your coins.”
• Software wallet means that Phantom is an app installed on your computer as a browser extension.
• Hot means that it can be connected to the Internet at any point. More precisely, with any DApp available in the Solana ecosystem.

Although the mobile version of the Phantom wallet is scheduled to appear in 2022, for now, it is desktop-only, available for download here. It supports all four major browsers: Chrome, Brave, Firefox, and Edge.

PHANTOM WALLET IS LIKE METAMASK FOR SOLANA

The concept of crypto wallets integrating into web browsers is rather new, popularized by MetaMask for Ethereum.

The Phantom Wallet is Solana’s answer to MetaMask, as a part of Web 3.0. Web 3.0 tries to bridge the decentralized nature of Web 1.0, where people and businesses had their own website, with the modern functionality and interactivity of Web 2.0. To illustrate, when you go to Solana’s ecosystem of hundreds of DApps and launch a blockchain game, Aliens vs. People, you will see an option in the upper-right corner to connect your Phantom wallet.

HOW TO FUND OR WITHDRAW MONEY FROM PHANTOM WALLET

You may have noticed that we didn’t list USD in the list of supported currencies. That’s because you can’t swap tokens directly. This is the sole purpose of stablecoins like USDT or USDC. They are equal to value with USD and are effectively tokenized fiat money. In other words, stablecoins are the bridge between fiat and crypto.

Here is how that bridge works. Let’s say you want to buy an NFT from Solana’s marketplace, Solanart. There are numerous NFT collections available, but let’s pick one from Aurory, a new blockchain game.

PHANTOM MAKES IT EASY TO USE SOLANA

The Phantom wallet is your gateway to Solana’s DApps. If you have never used Ethereum with MetaMask, you can count yourself spared. The transaction fee difference is quite drastic: $0.00025 per Solana transaction compared to hundreds of dollars on Ethereum.

Ethereum’s transaction fee is highly likely to change in the future as the network completes its ETH 2.0 upgrade. Whatever happens, Solana is a heavily funded project with a $55.7 billion market capitalization and extensive use cases provided by its DApps. Therefore, if you are into cryptos, metaverses, P2E, and NFTs, Phantom is a must-have wallet.