Phantom Wallet crashes big time! During the airdrop period, token prices went haywire and balances were reset to zero—users blasted it for “making them pay up.”

Author: Kurumi, Crypto City

A sudden malfunction during the Airdrop period causes abnormal price and balance displays On Monday evening, a popular Solana ecosystem wallet, Phantom, suddenly went down, causing multiple token prices and account balances within the platform to display abnormally. The outage occurred during a highly anticipated airdrop event, and with a major surge in transaction demand, the issue quickly escalated. The official statement said the abnormality mainly affected frontend data updates, preventing users from viewing the correct asset figures in real time, and even resulting in situations where prices plummeted or assets appeared as zero. Although Phantom emphasized that “users’ asset safety was not affected,” the incorrect information has nonetheless caused real interference with market behavior.

Users can’t trade and incur losses; the community demands full compensation During the outage, multiple users reported that they were unable to sell their tokens smoothly, missing opportunities from price volatility, and in some cases seeing losses on their books. On social platforms, some users said they lost about $450 within just 1.5 hours, or roughly NT$14k, sparking widespread panic.

Image source: X/@LetitBurn79 ｜ Some users on social platforms said they lost about $450 within just 1.5 hours

As more cases with reported losses emerge, some users have publicly called on Phantom to provide a compensation mechanism, arguing that the platform failed to operate reliably during periods of high volatility, which has affected trading decisions. The incident has also triggered market discussion about whether “frontend display errors should be held accountable,” especially in DeFi and self-custody wallet scenarios, where users typically have to bear operational risks themselves—making the responsibility boundary still a gray area.

Security concerns intensify, and phishing attacks take advantage of the moment During the service interruption, blockchain security firm PeckShield warned that malicious actors may exploit the chaotic conditions to launch phishing attacks, tricking users into clicking on malicious websites or signing suspicious transactions.

Image source: X/@PeckShieldAlert ｜ Blockchain security firm PeckShield warned that malicious actors may exploit the chaotic conditions to launch phishing attacks, tricking users into clicking on malicious websites or signing suspicious transactions

Past research has already pointed out that the Phantom wallet carries a “address poisoning” risk: attackers confuse users’ addresses by sending counterfeit transactions, further inducing accidental transfers. This incident once again magnified those security concerns. Experts advise that when anomalies occur at the application layer, users should verify asset status through an on-chain explorer and avoid relying solely on what the wallet displays.

Technical issues have been fixed, but the trust crisis remains to be observed Phantom later announced within a few hours that the issue had been resolved, and advised any users who still encounter abnormal behavior to contact customer support. The official has not disclosed the specific cause yet, but in the industry it is generally believed that this incident may have been caused by delayed data aggregation or API updates, rather than a failure of the blockchain itself. In fact, Phantom has also experienced similar balance display delay issues in the past, showing that even in scenarios involving high-frequency trading and simultaneous use by large numbers of users, the frontend infrastructure still has pressure bottlenecks. This incident highlights that although self-custody wallets emphasize asset ownership, they still face challenges similar to those of centralized exchanges in terms of user experience and system stability. How to strike a balance between decentralization and reliability has become an important next step challenge for the industry.