Funding Your Phantom Wallet


Now, you’ll want to put some money into that wallet! Phantom Wallet was designed for use on the Solana blockchain; while it now also supports other chains such as Ethereum, Polygon, and Bitcoin, this guide will focus on Solana.

Although the Solana blockchain supports a great number of tokens that have been built using its tools, its native token is SOL, and that is the token that you’ll need to perform operations—and pay transaction fees.

To get some SOL, you’ll want to sign up at a centralized exchange like Coinbase, Gemini, or Kraken, which you can connect to your bank account or credit card and be ready to buy SOL within a few minutes.


Desktop Setup


It’s important to be sure that you’re downloading cryptocurrency apps and browser extensions directly from their own websites or on authorized app stores, as malicious actors can set up copies that will steal your assets.

Go to Phantom Wallet’s download site and select your browser. Phantom supports a number of popular browsers, including Chrome, Firefox, Edge, and Brave.

Then, follow the steps in your browser’s respective extension store to install Phantom Wallet. After installation, Phantom will open up in a new tab in your browser.

Now, you’ll want to click on the “Create New Wallet” button. It will ask you to create a secure password—this password is used to unlock the wallet app on this browser and device.


Mobile Setup


Phantom Wallet is available on Android and iOS phones. Like on the desktop, be sure you are getting the official and authorized version of the app—again, go to Phantom’s download site and select the App Store that corresponds to your device to download.

Follow the usual steps on your mobile device to download and install the app, then open it—and you’ll see the onboarding screen to set up a new wallet.

If you’d like to create a separate phone wallet from the one you have on your desktop, choose “Create New Wallet” and go through the steps.


Your public address, by the way, is perfectly safe to give out to anyone who needs it—people can send you funds using it, but they can’t access what you have stored in your wallet without having access to your seed phrase.

The settings for Phantom are worth a look through; in the mobile app, they’re found by tapping the gear to the upper left. To find them on desktop, open the extension, then click the three horizontal lines in the app’s upper left; the gear icon will appear in the lower left corner.

Within settings, you can change your preferred display language, change your password, or set the time needed to elapse before the app locks automatically. You can also change the currency concession (for example, if you’re in the U.K., you might prefer Phantom to display the value of what you’re holding in pounds rather than dollars.

While you’re at it, look at the send and receive functions on Phantom itself—they’re front and center on the app’s home page. You can also view the history of your transactions in any token by tapping or clicking on that token from the Phantom Wallet app’s home page.
 

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Security


Whether you’re listing an NFT for sale, trading meme tokens, or interacting with other applications in the Solana ecosystem, you’ll be interacting with smart contracts, which are bits of code that perform a purpose on-chain. There are two kinds of interactions—simple signatures that prove that you own a particular wallet and transactions that involve a transaction fee. Most people can’t read smart contracts themselves unless they’re developers! So, it’s important to be sure the site you’re interacting with is trustworthy and that you’re actually on the correct site before you click anything.

Phantom Wallet has a built-in extra layer of security called transaction previews, powered by an always-on system called Blowfish. It will detect malicious code and warn you in plain language if you’re about to sign a transaction that could put your funds and NFTs at risk of being stolen. This works for Solana, Ethereum, and Polygon transactions on Phantom Wallet. There’s always a chance that a hacker will create a malicious contract that could fool Blowfish, though, so it’s important not to let your guard down when working with crypto!