The Signal
Phantom’s Brandon and Femi join Threadguy after the wallet’s announcement of perpetual trading powered by Hyperliquid. They frame the launch as a mobile-first, consumer-finance expansion: simpler long/short trading, built-in risk education, and eventually a social layer based on the trades people already watch.
Key Takeaways
- 01
Perps as a simpler instrument
The team sees perpetuals as a more direct way for ordinary users to express a long or short view than options, whose Greeks and implied-volatility mechanics remain hard to parse.
- 02
Hyperliquid for execution
Phantom chose Hyperliquid because it offers the deepest onchain perpetual liquidity, more markets, and better prices and execution for the user, they say.
- 03
Mobile is the opening
Rather than chase sophisticated whales, Phantom is targeting people who value convenience and a usable mobile experience, including push notifications and on-the-go trading.
- 04
Risk education is product work
Research showed users were confused by opening and closing positions, take-profit orders, and stop losses. The product teaches long and short positions and lets users set risk tolerance that can affect leverage and automatic stops.
- 05
Social follows the trade
Phantom does not want another place to post. Its social thesis is discovery around existing behavior: seeing trades, P&L, and signals from the people a user already follows.
On the Record
“We chose Hyperliquid essentially to give users our users access to the deepest liquidity on the market and, you know, that means giving them access to more markets to trade, giving them access to better prices, better execution.”
“Something that's huge and is pretty much completely missing from the perps landscape at the moment is like a slick mobile-first experience that you can actually use on the go.”
“We noticed that there were a lot of issues. People got confused on a ton of things around, you know, risk management: how do they understand what's going on when they open and close a position?”
“What we're trying to do, our unique approach to social is taking things that people already like to do, which is trade, share P&L and all that, and supercharge it with social discovery.”
The Breakdown
A wallet adds perpetuals
Threadguy opens on Phantom Perps, announced that week. Brandon says Phantom’s continuing aim is to package crypto’s capabilities into something simple, safe, and easy to use; perpetuals were an obvious next usability problem. Femi contrasts the product with options: people often simply want to go long or short, without navigating Greeks and implied volatility. The broader claim is that blockchain infrastructure has reached a point where more of the expectations people bring to a consumer-finance app can now be met onchain.
Why Hyperliquid sits underneath
The integration runs on Hyperliquid rather than a Solana venue such as Jupiter or Drift. Brandon’s explanation is execution: the team wanted the deepest liquidity, more tradable markets, and better pricing. He calls it a net positive for Solana if Phantom can keep users and flow in the onchain arena instead of losing them to a platform with no Solana connection; Phantom says it will reassess if a better option emerges.
Not a whale terminal
The team describes a broad but particular user: someone who wants a pleasant, mobile-native way to trade. It is not trying to win the most sophisticated whales using every available feature. Brandon says the missing product is a slick mobile experience, with conveniences such as push notifications, for users who had regarded perps as too advanced or too risky.
From wallet comparison to finance platform
Brandon says comparing Phantom primarily with MetaMask constrains the company’s thinking; he instead places it alongside Robinhood and Coinbase, with an advantage in being born onchain. The conversation also takes in Telegram bots and terminals such as Photon and Axiom. More competition has forced Phantom to improve its trading tool, but its ambition remains broader than another place to trade, extending to stablecoins and consumer-finance use cases.
Designing risk into the mobile flow
Femi says user research exposed confusion around position management, take-profit orders, and stop losses. The flow therefore explains what long and short mean, has users set risk tolerance, and can pair a lower tolerance with lower leverage and an automatic stop loss. A further interface decision was to let users choose margin first and apply leverage afterward, instead of squeezing a desktop-style size-first interface into a phone.
A social graph built on trades
The guests say native wallet experiences become more feasible as infrastructure grows faster and cheaper. Perps could also enliven Phantom’s existing social feed, but they distinguish that from putting Twitter onchain. The cold-start problem remains for social apps, although Phantom already has a large user base; the proposed graph centers on the people whose longs, shorts, liquidations, and P&L a trader actually finds useful. Femi says an internal perp test with a leaderboard made the experience more fun. The feature was rolling out to mobile users with more than 100 markets and a request for feedback.
Distilled from the episode transcript · Counterparty Recap Desk
