CoinGecko Podcast - Ep 40 - Brandon Millman, CEO and Co-founder of Phantom Wallet

Primer: In this episode of CoinGecko podcast, the host Benjamin Hor interviewed Brandon Millman, CEO and Co-founder of Phantom wallet, as he talked about what Phantom wallet is all about, highlights the differences compared to other wallets and shared their upcoming plans. Phantom wallet is a user-first crypto wallet based in the Solana blockchain.

Who is Brandon Millman

Introduction

• Co-founder and CEO of Phantom Wallet, a Solana based crypto wallet

• Launched around April in 2021

• Formally an engineering leader at 0x

• Before 0x in 2013, he was the senior engineer at Twitter

How did he switch from an engineer to this?

• His experience was probably similar to many who worked in Big Tech companies

• Became disillusioned with the typical work-loop found in such companies

• After 4 years, the magic of working in such companies was gone and he wanted to do something different

• Decided to join a nascent industry, got to knew Ethereum and was blown away

  • Instead of signing in with email and password, everyone just logs in with their wallet

  • Has a huge database that is shared with everyone - something different from what he is used to

• Starting reading the White Paper around 2017 and wanted to join more on the consumer side of things e.g. decentralised Uber, decentralised Twitter

• Realised that the tech is too early for these types of applications, so started to look into the infrastructure side and ended up in 0x

• 0x is an interesting blend of infrastructure and consumer app

Crypto Wallet

"Now a wallet can actually help you do stuff with your crypto too, by giving you access to a world of blockchain applications and DApp. Nowadays a wallet is more of an access point to those types of applications more than it is just a way to store your crypto."

Brandon Millman

Uses of Crypto wallet

• In the past, a wallet is just a piece of software to hold your crypto or digital assets

• The definition of a wallet has been changed to include access to DApps and other blockchain applications like Uniswap, OpenSea

• It is a gateway to all sorts of application

Changing the mental model of the future's Crypto wallet

• Able to connect to all DApps from the wallet

• Possible to integrate social media in wallets

• Can be a sort of identity in the Web 3.0 world

Phantom wallet

Why Solana blockchain?

• Spend 4 years doing a deep dive on Ethereum with his co-founders

  • All of them are experts in DApps in the Ethereum world and had helped in the launch of several large-scale widely used DApps

  • Wanted a solution for a wallet that is also a gateway to blockchain applications

  • Wanted to take a bet on a nascent ecosystem that is missing its flagship wallet for applications

  • Every other new blockchain is pitching on the chain being faster and cheaper

"Our medium to long term goal is to become a multi-chain wallet that gives users access to a world of DApps no matter where they live. So we're sort of starting our journey with Solana, but our first foray into becoming a multi-chain wallet will be our cooperation with Ethereum which is going to be later this year."

Brandon Millman

• At that time, Solana had a lot of early signals that it would be a big winner

  • Solana has a small and genuine core of community development around the technology

  • Had adjacency to big players like FTX and Jump Trading

  • There is a large deployment of native USDC on the chain, which is the lifeblood of decentralized exchange activity

  • Large overlap of users from Solana on other chains. Many came from Ethereum and got priced out because of the high fees

• Long term goal is to become a multi-chain wallet

  • Launched with Solana first, but will be starting on Ethereum later this year in 2021

What separates Phantom from other wallets like Sollet or Metamask?

• Features

  • Can view NFT in the wallet

  • Able to stake and swap in your wallet

• The key differentiator is not in the features but the DNA envisioned for the product

  • Taking a user-first approach in everything they do in Phantom

  • Not just in the app itself but also support, messaging, content, social media etc

  • The goal is to form a brand and experience that users come to love - something that is missing in the industry

• Have a second-mover advantage so they get to design a lot of the crypto trends, like DeFi, NFT, multi-chain, in mind when they are building the product

  • Metamask came out around 2016/2017 and a lot of these terminologies had not even existed yet so they cannot design a wallet around it

Any plans to capitalise on NFT hype?

• Help the Ethereum NFT space by having a wallet that they can view their NFTs - underserved at the moment

• Also will be building mobile apps so that people can participate in NFT drops on the go

  • A lot of drops happened at a certain time, so might not have ready access to the computers or laptops

  • Especially for the Solana side

Usage stats for the month of August 2021

• 180,000 monthly actives

• 2.3 million SOL stakes total, about $260 million in value

• $105 million going through their in-wallet swapper

• 1.8 million times of DApp transactions to the wallet

• Reasons for this huge growth in August:

  • There is an NFT hype in Solana, so a lot of growth comes from there

  • Star Atlas IPO

  • Raydium did a campagin

  • Mango Markets did their token launch

"I think you kind of see that when you read some of the reviews or look at some of the hype, a lot of it is about a user having an amazing first time experience with the product."

Brandon Millman

Wallets are essential to chain survivability

• Does not matter how fast or cheap the blockchain really is

• The first experience by a user matters - will colour the whole experience moving forward

• A person's experience with a blockchain and with a wallet is actually one and the same

  • If a person's experience is very slick and polished, he will likely stick to it

  • Not consumer friendly User Interface because the industry has a mindset of developers making apps for other developers, not consumers

• Overall in the DApp space, the User Interface is improving compared to 2017

  • But it's more like a local maximum - high but overall still low standard

  • No incentives to make it better as a developer - faster to copy and paste and grab cash than to thoughtfully hone a product and experience

  • Phantom intends to redefine the standard for the industry

Wallet based tokens

• Heard the rumours that Metamask might be having tokens

• Tokens are on the table but do not really have any concrete plans to do so right now

• In his opinion, the design goal of having a token is to decentralise the wallet and cede control over to the community of users

• Makes no sense to decentralise a wallet right now because the environment is changing and so it requires a lot of tight focus and iterations to get things done

  • Hard to happen in a decentralised community environment with the baggage of having to vote for changes all the time

  • Better to create a token when the protocol is worth governing - not anywhere near there now

Plans for Phantom

For 2nd half of 2021

• Push and perfect the user experience in Solana, e.g user safety, education and features in general

• Include Ethereum so that it will be their first foray into becoming a multi-chain wallet

• Develop mobile apps

For 2022

• More open-ended goals - to include more networks and chains

• Been playing catchup with other wallets so in 2022 they will be pushing the boundaries of what a wallet is and go beyond what is expected of a wallet

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