Phantom wallet is serious about security
Phantom wallet is one of the most used Solana wallets on the market now. The wallet has seen a lot of success especially after the introduction of the IOS wallet app. Phantom has seen great growth w ith many new partnerships as the year has gone by.
Earlier in the year the company combined with Magic Eden to offer users the ability to see their NFTs directly on their app on IOS and Android. Users were recently given the ability to post their NFTs for sale directly from the app. There have been constant upgrades and offerings for the wallet since inception.
Currently, there is a new feature rolled out from Phantom. The new feature is a burn feature that will allow users to get rid of spam NFTs. Spam NFTs are NFTs that randomly show up in the wallet of the user without notice or without a proper name or metadata connected to a real collection.
At the time of this article Phantom has prepared the app to offer users the ability to “Burn Token” meaning that they can get rid of the fraudulent token and recieve a small amount of SOL each time the feature is used. This is a welcome feature as it shows how the company is serious about providing a secure environment for those that use the platform.
A common scam on Solana takes places with the low transaction fees are implemented to airdrop NFTS to users for free. The NFTs contain malicious links which if clicked on will allow the hacker to infiltrate the wallet and drain the funds. The NFTs can also be used to get the seed funds of the wallet and do the same thing.
The feature is easy to use as the user needs to simply go to the fake NFT and press the three buttons on the top right corner, the user will see a ”burn token” option and upon pressing it will receive a warning that the action is irreversible. Once the user agrees to that there is a small fee associated with the burn as it is still a transaction, the token is then burned and a small amount of SOL is returned to the wallet for the burn. This is incredibly useful for those that have a lot of tokens but have no idea where they came from.
Phantom has not stopped with a burn feature, the company is also working on a phishing alert system that will detect malicious transaction and warn the user. The company is working with Blowfish to make this feature even better for its users.The user will be alerted to links that are dangerous or prove to have a scam attached to them.
These changes are coming right after a hack that stole more than $4 million in funds from 8000 wallets last month due to a hack that originated from a Slope wallet. Many victims saw their wallets emptied and a lot of the community was quick to blame Solana and Phantom for the problem. After some deep research from both companies the result was neither Solana nor Phantom were to blame.
The situation was indeed found on a single Slope wallet and was attributed to private keys from the mobile wallet that were used for the hack, though the problem was the Slope wallet, the issue was tracked back to Phantom as 60% of the victims were users of the Phantom wallet. Phantom wants its clients to feel safe and has promised even more updates and security features coming soon to the beloved wallet app.
