Creator Economy - The Future of Crypto Wallets
Dear subscribers, I recently interviewed Brandon Millman, CEO of Phantom, the #1 wallet on Solana. The Phantom team raised $109M and is actively hiring. In our interview, Brandon covers:
You can read my notes below or listen to the conversation here: Going live shortly with @BChillman, CEO of @phantom. Don't miss out on:
1. Founding story of this friendly crypto wallet
2. Journey to 2M+ monthly active users
3. Where Brandon thinks the future of wallets will go
Join us below: https://t.co/Ml87tbIevl Phantom’s journeyCan you share your web3 journey and what led you to start Phantom? I started my web3 journey in 2017. I was working at Twitter and became disillusioned with the typical web2 growth loops (A/B tests, time spent, etc). I wanted something different and started diving into Ethereum. My co-founders and I built 0X and Matcha to power Ethereum DeFi. That experience led us to a few insights:
We decided to build Phantom as the best-in-class crypto wallet for Solana. Phantom scaled to 3 million users in just six months. What drove this growth? It’s been a crazy ride for sure! There have been three drivers:
Phantom is a wallet known for its great user experience. Did you have any core principles while building the product? Yes, we have a few product principles:
How do you stay connected to your customers? As you know, web3 people are very vocal. The go-to customer support channel in crypto has been to throw everyone into a Discord and hope it works out. We spent the last six months building a better support process:
I thought the state of the art for support was Metamask Google forms? (kidding) Future of crypto walletsHow can wallets provide a better web3 onramp for the next 1B users? There’s a lot of low-hanging fruit to address in the short term. For example:
We both used to work at Twitter, and it’s still the platform of choice for web3 people to follow and connect with each other. Do you think wallets can build a separate web3 social layer? People have been trying to create a web3 social layer for a while now. Twitter has been serving this need well and is starting to lean into crypto features like NFT profiles. So far, I haven’t seen a lot of issues around web3 censorship and de-platforming on Twitter. That being said, I think there’s a big opportunity for wallets to own this space moving forward. Wallets are the identity layer for web3 after all. Yeah, I think a web3 social layer would have to be an order of magnitude better than what Twitter is doing. I think you’re right. It has to be a step function improvement to dislodge people from the network effects of web2 social networks. It’ll be interesting to see how this space evolves. Today, most people get a wallet to buy an NFT or use a dapp. Now that you have 3M people using Phantom, can wallets drive discovery of NFTs and dapps instead? A user’s journey into crypto starts with basic onboarding and ends with discovering and using different dapps. Wallets play a central role in this journey. The fact is, dapp discovery is scattered across random Twitter threads and other channels. I can definitely see a world where wallets recommend dapps instead. What are some other ways to onboard the masses to web3? It’s still very early. Metamask’s 30M users and Phantom’s 3M is extremely small compared to the hundreds of millions that use web2 social apps and games. I think we need to build new use cases in web3 beyond DeFi and NFTs. Two that I’m excited about:
It’s funny you mention payments because the original Bitcoin whitepaper was all about peer-to-peer cash. Why hasn’t this vision become a reality? I think consumers are ready for peer-to-peer cash using crypto, but a big missing piece is merchant acceptance. Retail and mom-and-pop shops simply don’t have the infra (e.g., point of sale) to accept and manage crypto right now. Wrap upWhat are some ways for beginners to start exploring Solana? Good question. For Solana NFTs, Magic Eden is the biggest secondary marketplace. I’ve also enjoyed using Form Function, a marketplace for 1/1 NFT creators. For Solana DeFi, Raydium is the best entry point for users familiar with Uniswap. Solend is a lending platform that’s similar to Compound and Aave. Where’s Phantom going next? We’re investing in a few areas:
How can people get involved in Phantom? We’re hiring across the board - engineering, product, design, marketing/BD, growth, etc. Check out phantom.app/jobs or email us at careers@phantom.app if you don’t see a role that you want. I’m glad that Phantom is building great consumer experiences in crypto. Thanks for your time Brendan! Also, check out Odyssey’s Phantom company profile. If you liked this post from Creator Economy by Peter Yang, why not share it? |
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