Phantom Review: The Solana Wallet That Learned Ethereum, Base and Bitcoin

Phantom began as a Solana wallet and still behaves like one: quick, tidy and built for people who sign a lot of small transactions. The open question is whether it has grown into a wallet you can hand your Ethereum, Base and Bitcoin activity to as well. Our answer is yes for most people, with three caveats we spell out below.

What you actually get for free

Installing Phantom costs nothing. It runs as a browser extension and as an iOS and Android app, and the company also offers a desktop terminal for heavier trading. The homepage describes it as self-custodial: "we never have access" to your funds.

Beyond holding tokens, the product has spread. It now offers perpetual futures, prediction markets and a Visa payment card, according to Phantom's own page. We treated those as extras. A wallet that bolts on a trading venue also bolts on new ways to lose money quickly, and none of them is the reason to install it.

The part that matters is the chain list. Coin Bureau's review lists Solana, Ethereum, Bitcoin, Base, Polygon, Sui, HyperEVM and Monad. For a Solana user who now and then bridges to Base or buys a little Ethereum, that is enough that a second wallet is rarely needed.

The Explore tab, and why it is both useful and risky

Phantom's Explore page is a live list of trending tokens and apps. It is handy when you want to see what is moving on Solana without opening a charting site.

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Treat that list as a discovery feed, not a recommendation. Trending means popular, and popular on Solana often means a token that is days old. A wallet makes buying such a token one tap away, which is convenient and also exactly how people get hurt.

Bitcoin without the drama

Bitcoin support arrived in 2024. Phantom's launch post says it handles two address types: Native SegWit by default and Taproot if you switch it on in settings. Each type keeps its own balance, which confuses newcomers once.

The detail we liked is that the wallet protects rare sats and inscribed assets from being spent by accident in ordinary transfers. People who collect Ordinals will appreciate that.

Advanced Bitcoin users will not. There is no coin control to speak of, so if you care which UTXOs fund a payment, a dedicated Bitcoin wallet is the better tool.

Fees: the 0.85% line

Sending and receiving is free apart from the network fee. Swaps are where the money goes. Independent reviews, including Coin Bureau, report a 0.85% fee on select swaps on top of network fees and price impact, and a higher charge on gasless swaps.

Put in plain numbers: a $1,000 swap on an eligible pair costs $8.50 before the chain takes its share. On a $50 trade that is trivial. On a $10,000 move it is $85, and a decentralised exchange aggregator reached directly would often cost less. We would not pay it on large trades.

Getting it and staying safe

Setup takes minutes. The download page offers desktop and mobile versions, with a Chrome extension preview.

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Phantom's help centre states plainly that support will never DM you or ask for your recovery phrase. We repeat it because most losses in this category come from fake support accounts and fake extensions, not from the wallet software. Install only from the address above or the official store listings.

The wallet shows transaction previews and flags suspicious requests and malicious domains. Those warnings are good, and not a guarantee: a signature you approve is a signature you approve.

Phantom works with Ledger. We would use that for anything you cannot afford to lose, so that the key sits on a device with a secure element and Phantom is only the screen.

Where Phantom loses to MetaMask and Rabby

The missing feature is custom networks. If you want to add an obscure EVM chain by typing in an RPC address, Phantom will not let you. MetaMask and Rabby will. Rabby also leans harder into pre-signing simulation for EVM trades. If most of your activity is on Ethereum mainnet and its layer twos, you may prefer them.

Phantom's blog is also where the company explains new features, which is useful for keeping up, though it reads like a product channel and not like an audit.

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Who should install it

Install Phantom if Solana is where your activity lives and you want a wallet that feels finished. It earns an 8.1 for being the easiest way into that ecosystem, for adding Base, Ethereum and Bitcoin without turning clumsy, and for costing nothing to hold.

Skip it as your only wallet if you use many EVM chains, move large amounts through in-app swaps, or want deep Bitcoin control. And whatever you pick, a hot wallet on a laptop is not a vault. This is a review of software, not personal financial advice.