Phantom Wallet Crashes Big Time! During the Airdrop Period, Token Prices Get Thrown Off, Balances Go to Zero—Users Blast the “Losses”

Author: Kurumi, Crypto City

A sudden malfunction during the Airdrop period caused abnormal pricing and balance displays On Monday evening, the Solana ecosystem’s popular wallet Phantom suffered an unexpected service disruption, causing multiple token prices and account balances within the platform to display abnormally. The outage occurred during a widely watched airdrop campaign, and as transaction demand surged, the problem quickly escalated. The official said that the abnormality mainly affected front-end data refreshes, preventing users from viewing the correct asset figures in real time, and even resulting in displays such as price plunges or assets showing as zero. Although Phantom stressed that “user asset security was not affected,” the incorrect information had already materially interfered with market behavior.

Users can’t trade and suffer losses, and the community demands full compensation During the outage, multiple users reported that they were unable to sell tokens smoothly, missing opportunities from price fluctuations, and even seeing paper losses. Some users on social platforms said they lost about $450 within just 1.5 hours—around NT$14k—sparking panic that spread across the community.

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

As more instances of return-rate cases have emerged, some users have publicly demanded that Phantom provide a compensation mechanism, arguing that the platform failed to operate stably during periods of high volatility, which has affected trading decisions. The incident has also sparked market discussions about whether “responsibility should be taken for front-end display errors.” This is especially relevant in DeFi and self-custody wallet scenarios, where users typically have to assume operational risks themselves, leaving the lines of responsibility in a gray area.

Security concerns intensify, and phishing attacks appear opportunistically During the service interruption, blockchain security firm PeckShield warned that malicious actors could take advantage of the chaotic situation to launch phishing attacks, tricking users into clicking malicious websites or signing suspicious transactions.

Image source: X/@PeckShieldAlert ｜ PeckShield, a blockchain security company, warned that malicious actors could take advantage of the chaotic situation to launch phishing attacks, tricking users into clicking malicious websites or signing suspicious transactions

Past research has indicated that the Phantom wallet has an “address poisoning” risk—where attackers confuse users’ addresses by sending forged transactions, further inducing people to mistakenly transfer assets. This incident once again amplified concerns about the related security risks. Experts remind that when anomalies occur at the application layer, users should verify their asset status through an on-chain explorer, rather than relying solely on the wallet’s displayed information to make decisions.

The technical issue has been fixed, but the trust crisis remains to be observed Phantom later announced within a few hours that the problem had been resolved and advised users who still encountered anomalies to contact customer support. The official has not yet released the specific cause, but industry consensus is that the incident may have stemmed from data integration issues or delayed API updates, rather than a malfunction of the blockchain itself. In fact, Phantom has also previously experienced similar issues with delayed balance displays, showing that even in high-frequency trading and scenarios where large numbers of users act simultaneously, the front-end 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 issue for the industry.