What Is Phantom Wallet and How to Use It?

Key Takeaways

• Phantom Wallet is a crypto wallet for managing cryptocurrencies and other digital assets across multiple blockchains, including Solana, Ethereum, and Bitcoin.
• Phantom Wallet is non-custodial, so it doesn’t hold your private keys and seed phrases. Users have total control over their keys and digital assets.
• Phantom offers many features and serves as a gateway for users to manage their cryptocurrencies and non-fungible tokens (NFTs). It can also be used to interact with decentralized finance applications.
• Keep your crypto wallet safe by using strong passwords, enabling biometric authentication, and connecting only to trusted DApps. Make sure to keep your seed phrase private and safe.

What Is Phantom Wallet?

Phantom Wallet is a non-custodial cryptocurrency wallet. Although it was initially designed for the Solana blockchain, Phantom now supports multiple chains, including Solana, Ethereum, Base, Polygon, and Bitcoin. Being non-custodial means that Phantom Wallet doesn’t hold your private keys and seed phrases, so users have total control over their keys and digital assets.

Phantom Wallet serves as a gateway for users to manage their cryptocurrencies and NFTs (non-fungible tokens). Similar to other Web3 wallets, Phantom also allows you to interact with decentralized finance (DeFi) platforms and applications (DApps).

How to Set Up a Phantom Wallet

Getting started with Phantom Wallet only takes a few simple steps. In this example, we will use the Phantom Wallet browser extension, but the process is pretty much the same on mobile. The main difference is that, on mobile, you can use biometric security such as fingerprint or facial recognition.

1. First, go to the official website and download the version you need. As of December 2024, Phantom is available as a mobile app (iOS and Android) and browser extension (Chrome, Firefox, Brave, and Edge).

2. Next, you can create a new wallet or import an existing one. Let’s create a brand new wallet.