DeFi wallet Phantom raises $9 million in Series A funding led by A16z

[RSRS]

Quick Take
DeFi wallet Phantom, which currently supports the Solana blockchain, has raised $9 million in Series A funding.
Phantom wants to build its team and launch support for Ethereum and its layer-two scaling solutions.
Phantom, a crypto wallet and browser extension for accessing decentralized finance (DeFi) applications, has raised $9 million in a Series A funding round.

Andreessen Horowitz (A16z) led the round, with participation from Variant Fund, Jump Capital, DeFi Alliance, and the Solana Foundation. Angel investors, including early Coinbase investor Garry Tan and unknown executives from Compound, dYdX, Lolli, and the Ethereum Foundation, also backed the round.

With fresh capital at hand, Phantom, a non-custodial wallet that currently supports the Solana blockchain, plans to expand to other networks, including Ethereum and Ethereum layer-two scaling solutions.

"We are currently engaging with and evaluating a number of layer-two solutions, and sidechains, including Polygon, Arbitrum, Optimism, and ZK Sync," Phantom CEO Brandon Millman told The Block. He said Phantom is targeting the fall of this year for multi-chain support.

Besides expanding to the Ethereum ecosystem, another major plan of Phantom is to continue innovating on its Solana ecosystem and introduce more features, said Millman. These features include in-wallet staking, more markets and liquidity for the in-wallet token swapper, fiat on-ramps via MoonPay, and a new Ethereum/Solana asset bridge, he said.

"We will look at monetization of our in-wallet token swapper and potentially staking features. NFTs are also an exciting new area for experimentation," said Millman on Phantom's business model.

Sourch