Phantom Wallet Addresses Account Balance Visibility Bug
Phantom, a prominent crypto wallet provider within the Solana ecosystem, has recently tackled a bug that impacted the visibility of account balances. On August 15, multiple users reported issues with their applications, noting missing or incorrect token balances, which raised concerns about possible hacking incidents.
One user expressed frustration, stating, “I just got on Phantom, and all my coins besides the main coins are gone. It must be a glitch, right??!?!?” In response to these issues, Phantom promptly conducted an investigation and resolved the problem. The company announced, “We have resolved a temporary issue that prevented users from properly seeing account balances. While this did not impact user funds, we know how serious incidents like this are. Our team is taking steps to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
Phantom Wallet’s Growth and Popularity
Since its launch in 2021, Phantom has rapidly established itself as a leading wallet for Solana, boasting over 7 million monthly active users as of April 2024. This impressive growth has largely been fueled by the memecoin craze within the Solana ecosystem, which propelled Phantom to the top of the charts on Apple’s App Store, outpacing other major crypto applications such as Coinbase. The wallet’s popularity soared further with the integration of Bitcoin in May.
Despite its swift expansion, Phantom faces intense competition from other crypto wallet applications. According to CryptoRank, it ranked third among the top 10 crypto wallet applications in July, following Bitget Wallet and MetaMask, both of which achieved over 1 million app downloads. Phantom Wallet secured 667,000 downloads, placing it among the top 10 wallets by download numbers.
Nonetheless, Phantom remains a widely used crypto application within the Solana ecosystem. This popularity has also attracted malicious actors, leading to the recent launch of a fraudulent app on the App Store that imitated the legitimate Phantom Wallet, resulting in the loss of users’ funds.
