Why Wallets Are Becoming Crypto’s Most Important Apps, According to Phantom CEO Brandon Millman

For years, crypto wallets have been treated as a necessary inconvenience. You opened one to store assets, sign transactions, and move on to whatever app you actually wanted to use. They were tools, not products, and rarely where anyone wanted to spend time. That model is starting to break.

As discussed in a recent a16z crypto conversation with Phantom CEO Brandon Millman, wallets are evolving into something much bigger. Instead of acting as passive storage, they are becoming the primary interface for on-chain activity.

Trading, payments, financial products, and discovery are collapsing into the wallet itself, positioning it as the front door to a decentralized internet rather than a background utility.

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Wallets Are Evolving Beyond Asset Storage

What’s becoming clear is that wallets are no longer passive containers for crypto assets. They are actively absorbing functionality that once lived across dozens of separate applications. Features like on-chain trading, perpetual futures, prediction markets, payments, and even social feeds are increasingly being surfaced directly inside the wallet experience. 

“This changes the role of the wallet—from a gateway into crypto to the place where crypto actually happens. Instead of hopping between apps, users are starting to expect the wallet itself to handle most of their financial activity.”

Brandon Millman, Co-founder & CEO of Phantom

This evolution is not cosmetic. It reflects a deeper shift in how crypto products are being designed for real people rather than power users. When functionality lives inside the wallet, complexity can be abstracted away without removing capability. The wallet becomes opinionated about safety, flow, and clarity, shaping how users interact with increasingly sophisticated financial tools. Over time, that influence compounds.

“Crypto apps are becoming the most credible attempt yet at building the next super app of the new internet.”

Brandon Millman, Co-founder & CEO of Phantom

Wallets did not set out to become super apps. They were forced into it by starting with money. When finance is the base layer, everything else has to meet a higher bar. That pressure created products people actually trust. And trust, more than any feature set, is what allows wallets to expand into something much bigger. 

That’s why, as Brandon Millman points out, wallets are emerging as the most credible candidates to become the next generation of super apps.

Why Finance Comes Before Social

One of the more counterintuitive ideas in the conversation is that starting with finance may be a better path to a super app than starting with social. Historically, consumer platforms grew by capturing attention first and monetizing later. Crypto flips that logic.

Money is native to crypto. Every interaction involves value, risk, and irreversible consequences. That reality forces products to earn trust immediately. Wallets don’t get to experiment recklessly. They are judged by how safely and clearly they handle people’s assets.

“Wallets will become super apps when the data they touch lasts.”

 

@Filecoin

For this reason, wallets develop trust long before they ever think about social features. When discovery, feeds, or community elements are layered on later, they inherit that trust instead of having to manufacture it. That sequence may be why wallets feel uniquely positioned compared to other consumer crypto apps.

Phantom’s Shift From Solana First to Multichain

Phantom’s journey from a Solana-first wallet to a multichain platform mirrors this broader shift. Supporting multiple chains is not just a technical upgrade, it’s a change in identity. Users increasingly expect their wallet to work wherever they go, without friction or re-learning.

“Crypto is kind of the black hole that’s absorbing everything in finance.” 

Brandon Millman, Co-founder & CEO of Phantom

Brandon believes that in order for them to leapfrog TradFi competitors, they need to capture crypto’s cultural gravity by becoming accessible across the entire ecosystem. That’s why the decision to make Phantom go from an exclusive Solana wallet into a multichain wallet strategically made sense.

Going multichain pushes wallets to smooth over differences between ecosystems. Network choice becomes less visible. The wallet becomes the constant, the interface users recognize and rely on regardless of what chain they are interacting with. 

Over time, that makes the wallet more central than any individual protocol. With that being said, despite interoperability, user experience is still a key factor that Brandon believes wallets must do right if they expect better adoption.

UX, Trust, and Security as Real Moats

One of the recurring threads in the conversation is that wallets do not get to treat UX and security as secondary concerns. Because wallets sit closest to user intent, every decision flows through them. Every approval, every transaction, every moment of risk is mediated at the wallet layer. That proximity fundamentally changes the stakes. When something goes wrong, the wallet is where users feel it first.

This is why UX and trust function less like features and more like structural moats. A confusing flow is not just bad design, it creates hesitation at the moment value is on the line. A security misstep is not a bug, it is a breach of trust that is almost impossible to recover from. Over time, this forces wallets to develop a level of discipline that many crypto applications historically avoided, especially in faster moving markets.

The interview highlights how this pressure shapes product behavior. Wallets are forced to make complex actions legible, not just possible. They have to guide users through irreversible decisions without overwhelming them, while still preserving autonomy. When they succeed, the reward is not just usage but reliance. Users stop thinking about whether they trust the wallet and start assuming they do.

Trading, Perps, and Prediction Markets Inside the Wallet

Another signal that wallets are evolving beyond their original role is the kind of financial products now being pulled into them. Tools like perpetual futures and prediction markets were once confined to specialized trading platforms built for experienced users. Their presence inside wallets suggests a shift in expectations around who these tools are for and how they should be accessed.

When these products live inside the wallet, the distance between holding assets and using them collapses. Users no longer need to context switch or reestablish trust in a new interface to act. The wallet becomes the place where strategy happens, not just storage. That consolidation reinforces the idea that wallets are becoming consumer finance hubs rather than passive infrastructure.

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The FTX Collapse and Solana’s Counterintuitive Reset

The conversation also touches on the impact of the FTX collapse and what it meant for Solana and the ecosystem surrounding it. While the event was deeply damaging in the short term, it forced a recalibration. Projects that continued building had to do so under far greater scrutiny, without relying on momentum or narrative.

For wallets operating in that environment, trust became even more critical. There was no room for fragility or vague UX. Products that survived were forced to prioritize fundamentals, resilience, and clarity. The counterintuitive result was a stronger foundation, shaped under pressure rather than hype.

Are Wallets Competing With Browsers

As wallets absorb more functionality, a larger question naturally emerges. If wallets are where users manage money, identity, and interaction, how different are they from browsers? Instead of navigating websites, users navigate onchain environments through approvals, signatures, and transactions.

This does not necessarily mean wallets replace browsers outright. But it does suggest that for the decentralized internet, wallets may become the default interface. They are where intent is expressed and value moves. That alone positions them as one of the most important layers in the stack.

Where AI Agents Fit Into the Wallet Future

Looking forward, the discussion briefly touches on AI agents and whether they could one day replace apps or browsers entirely. Even in that future, wallets do not disappear. Autonomous agents still need a trusted place to hold keys, define permissions, and receive authorization to act on behalf of users.

Rather than competing with wallets, AI agents may increase their importance. The wallet becomes the anchor for identity, intent, and value, even as execution becomes automated. Wallets are emerging as the most credible candidates to become the next generation of super apps. They did not start by chasing attention. They started by handling money, and everything else followed.

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Final Thoughts

What makes this conversation with a16z and Phantom CEO Brandon Millman compelling is not a single prediction, but the pattern it reveals. Across product design, user behavior, and ecosystem shifts, wallets keep emerging as the layer where trust, intent, and value converge. Not because they set out to dominate the stack, but because they were forced to get the hardest part right first.

Starting with finance imposed constraints that most consumer apps never face. Wallets had to earn trust immediately, manage irreversible actions, and make complexity survivable for real users. That pressure shaped how they were built, and it continues to shape how they expand. As Brandon explains, once that foundation exists, everything else feels like a natural extension rather than a risky experiment.

"This is why wallets increasingly resemble super apps without calling themselves that. They are not chasing attention or engagement metrics. They are becoming indispensable by quietly absorbing the parts of crypto that matter most."

Brandon Millman, Co-founder & CEO of Phantom

If the decentralized internet ends up with a default interface, this interview makes a strong case that it will not start with social or content, but with the place people already trust to hold their money.

For more insight into where crypto is headed in 2026, check out these forward-looking pieces: 

• Gemini’s five predictions for the crypto landscape in 2026

• How Fetch.ai is enabling the first AI-to-AI payments for real-world transactions