Entering the world of NFTs can be an exciting yet daunting experience. While you may know you want a certain NFT — you like the art, the team, the community — the “how-to-buy that NFT” may trip you up. Fortunately, it all starts with the most basic NFT essential: the wallet.
Your wallet is the link between you and your NFT. It acts as storage, determines compatibility with different marketplaces, and retains security.
The right ones seamlessly integrate into your NFT life.
The wrong ones can expose your NFTs to theft.
In this guide, we cover the best 10 NFT wallets — their utility, security, and supported blockchains. By the end, you’ll know all the information you need in your quest to get an NFT wallet, no matter if you’re a short-term trader, a long-term collector, or both.
And you’ll be able to answer the question, “What is an NFT wallet?” with confidence.
Best 7 NFT Hot Wallets
A “hot” wallet. You may have heard the term before in crypto but are unsure of what it means. Essentially, these wallets provide a high degree of utility but at a steep cost: The security of your NFTs is more at risk in these wallets when compared to the security of sturdy “cold” or “hardware” wallets.
This utility breaks down into a few topics:
- Easy management and transferring of NFTs
- Easy purchasing and selling
- Easy access to the wallet itself
- Availability of interesting features like viewing NFTs in-wallet
The lack of security comes from two particular angles:
- Storage of private keys online
- Exploits within the wallet’s “signing” feature
We’ll cover seven of the best NFT hot wallets here, starting with the most popular.
#1 – MetaMask
- Active Monthly Users: 10 million
- Blockchains Supported: Ethereum
ConsenSys released NFT wallet MetaMask in 2016, and for years, it functioned solely as a browser extension for Chrome and Firefox. During the NFT craze in 2021, MetaMask usage took off, becoming the “go-to” wallet for NFT purchases for casual traders and collectors.
It even surpassed 10 million active monthly users this year.
MetaMask operates as a “hot wallet,” meaning that the user’s private keys are stored online. While this has security implications, the wallet’s utility and ease of use have so far trumped any concerns, even as reports of scams involving the wallet have come out.
With MetaMask, you can connect to most Ethereum-based NFT marketplaces, including OpenSea and Rarible. The wallet is also compatible with the top NFT games that use the Ethereum blockchain.
Connecting to a marketplace is as simple as clicking a “connect” button and signing off on the transaction in the MetaMask wallet. When you do this, you allow MetaMask to interact with the website, making it easy to purchase and sell NFTs.
In the wallet, you can store different Ethereum coins, including major coins involved in NFT trading. Transferring is relatively fast — in fact, funds can appear in your MetaMask wallet within a matter of seconds.
You can add other networks to the wallet manually, which allows you to use sidechains like Polygon and the Ethereum-Matic bridge. There is also a “swap” feature that allows you to convert coins within the wallet. You can connect to decentralized exchanges as well.
One of the security concerns with MetaMask is its “sign” function. While this creates ease of use when dealing with safe websites, it can lead to thieves stealing your NFTs if you “sign” to a suspicious or dangerous website.
The general rule of thumb with MetaMask is to verify that the website you’re connecting to is trustworthy. This practice can allow you to enjoy the ease that MetaMask provides while keeping your NFTs safe.
You can download a Metamask wallet here or by going to your Chrome Web Store.
#2 – Trust Wallet
- Active Monthly Users: 5 million
- Blockchains Supported: 33, including Ethereum
A product of Binance, Trust Wallet is perhaps one of the most versatile hot wallets on the market today. Non-custodial and decentralized, this wallet supports 33 different blockchains, including Ethereum, and can manage over 250,000 assets.
It connects to OpenSea and other major Ethereum marketplaces, making it a powerful alternative to MetaMask. The difference is that Trust Wallet doesn’t appear to have a computer option. Instead, you’ll be working off a QR code on your mobile device to connect it to marketplaces.
Its lack of a computer component makes it a little less user-friendly for casual NFT traders and collectors, as you always need to have your phone handy for transactions. Other than this hindrance, Trust Wallet works seamlessly with the marketplaces for trading.
You’ll need to sign off on all transactions while using Trust Wallet by punching in your six-digit PIN.
The wallet can store a high number of cryptocurrency coins, and many of them are already pre-stored within the wallet. You can swap currency in the mobile app or use the “DApps” section.
The app itself is user-friendly. It has easy-to-press buttons for buying, sending, and receiving cryptocurrency. There are helpful “%” buttons when you’re exchanging currency so that you don’t have to use an external calculator to determine how much you want to swap.
You can also view your NFTs under the “Collections” button at the top.
The main criticism of Trust Wallet in the past has been the cost of making a transaction. Unlike in some wallets where fees are relatively low, the fees for transferring, converting, or sending cryptocurrency using Trust Wallet seem high.
You can get a Trust Wallet from its website or the app store that corresponds to your mobile device.
#3 – Coinbase Wallet
- Active Monthly Users: 9 million
- Blockchains Supported: Ethereum
The Coinbase Wallet, one in a suite of products that reaches over 73 million verified users, is a solid choice for NFT trading based on its functionality and pleasing interface.
The wallet supports ERC-721 tokens, one of the primary tokens used in NFT trading, and you can connect the Coinbase Wallet to most major Ethereum NFT sites.
The Coinbase Wallet is separate from its mobile app and desktop platform, both of which connect to your main Coinbase account. The Coinbase Wallet has a specific handle associated with it, and to log in you’ll need to use your six-digit PIN.
The wallet contains two tabs: one for coins and one for NFTs. There are three buttons up top for sending, receiving, and trading cryptocurrency, along with three tabs at the bottom. One of these tabs accesses the wallet; another a webpage that takes you to DApps; and another for settings.
A nice feature about the Coinbase Wallet is seeing your NFTs directly in the app. This feature allows you to easily see what you might want to sell or keep.
Unlike some other wallets, token selection in the Coinbase Wallet is limited. The wallet supports eight major coins, along with all ERC-20 coins like USDC and DAI. So you will be limited in the number of tokens you can hold, send, and exchange.
But you can use it for buying and selling NFTs, as long as they are on the Ethereum blockchain. Your private keys for this wallet are stored on your mobile device rather than on Coinbase.com, which gives it slightly better security than some hot wallets.
You can find the link to download the Coinbase Wallet on its website or in an app store.
#4 – Math Wallet
- Active Monthly Users: 2 million
- Blockchains Supported: 86+
Math Wallet, a superpowered wallet that supports over 86 blockchains, has over two million active users and secured $7.8 in Series A funding in early November 2021. It has high promise for NFTs with the number of blockchains it supports and the growth of the NFT market outside of the Ethereum blockchain.
The wallet presents many different options for the user, including a web wallet, desktop wallet, and mobile wallet. This functionality allows you to use your Math Wallet on multiple devices through a sign-in feature.
The presentation on the website is a little unwieldy, and a quick look at the mobile wallet shows that a user needs to create separate wallets for each blockchain. For example, there is a wallet for the Bitcoin blockchain, one for the Ethereum blockchain, and wallets for the other dozens of blockchains the Math Wallet supports.
As of now, you can’t connect Math Wallet directly to some marketplaces. Instead, you’ll need to use WalletConnect. It’s a little extra work but not significantly so.
Where the Math Wallet may eventually stand out is connecting to lesser-known marketplaces like those that house Cardano or AVAX NFTs. This compatibility would give Math Wallet users the ease of holding most of their NFTs in the same general wallet.
You can download the Math Wallet by going to the Math Wallet website.
#5 – Rainbow Wallet
- Active Monthly Users: Reached a high this year
- Blockchains Supported: Ethereum
Rainbow Wallet, which supports only the Ethereum blockchain, is an up-and-comer that offers users an alternative to well-known hot wallets brands. And although it launched a few years ago, it has been gaining steam as of late due to great ease-of-use and customer service, posting a high in daily users earlier this year.
The wallet is known for its user-friendliness, including features like a gas calculator, a separate miner’s tip, the ability to view NFTs in the wallet, and the opportunity to listen to music NFTs directly from the wallet. It also has a straightforward and pleasing interface that makes navigating a simple task.
While other hot wallets are known for technical and sometimes confusing terminology, the Rainbow Wallet puts terms in plain language, making it easier to onboard users new to crypto and NFTs.
Rainbow Wallet can also connect to the top Ethereum NFT marketplaces through WalletConnect, allowing you to purchase and sell NFTs like any other hot wallet.
Users rave about Rainbow Wallet on Twitter. One touted feature is Rainbow’s customer service, which people say is miles ahead of MetaMask’s.
The company is also adding updates to the Rainbow Wallet, such as the gas calculator, which allows you to manually adjust how much gas you want to spend with easy-to-follow buttons like “Normal,” “Fast,” and “Urgent.”
Although the Rainbow Wallet is only available on an iOS mobile device, the Rainbow Wallet for Android is in beta. You can sign up for the waitlist on the Rainbow website and even message them to speed the process along.
To download the Rainbow wallet, head to its website and click on the link for the app store corresponding to your mobile phone’s operating system.
#6 – Phantom Wallet
- Active Monthly Users: 1 million
- Blockchains Supported: Solana
Phantom, consistently ranked as one of the top hot wallets on the Solana blockchain, recently crested 1 million active monthly users and rolled out a mobile app designed to give Solana NFT traders more options when buying or selling their non-fungible tokens.
While Phantom the company is more blockchain agnostic, the wallet itself is geared for the fast-moving Solana blockchain. The Phantom wallet facilitates the buying and selling of NFTs, sending and receiving of various Solana-blockchain cryptocurrencies, and swapping of cryptocurrencies for others.
With a dark background and light font, the Phantom browser extension wallet is easy to read. You can view your NFTs directly in the wallet, see how much cryptocurrency you have, and view recent transactions. With Phantom Wallet, you can connect to all top Solana marketplaces.
Within the NFT collectibles section, you can see a close-up view of your NFT, a description of that NFT, pull up the transaction history of your NFT wallet address on Solscan (a sort of NFT wallet tracker), and send your NFT to another wallet. It is — in some ways — an upgraded version of some of the top Ethereum hot wallets.
If you’re looking to work some DeFi magic, you can also connect your Phantom wallet to various Solana DEX platforms and exchange tokens. You have the option of managing your token list in the Phantom Wallet to add more to your home screen as well.
Phantom is a wallet with a little more security than some other browser extension wallets out there. Frequently, it’ll make you sign in with your password. For even top hot wallets, you can access the wallet for hours without inputting a password.
This feature in Phantom is helpful if you’re working on a shared computer, have forgotten to log out, and don’t want someone tampering with your NFT hot wallet.
You can add the Phantom Wallet to your browser extension easily by going to its homepage, Phantom.app.
#7 – Anchor
- Active Monthly Users: unknown
- Blockchains Supported: EOS blockchains
Anchor, one of the top WAX wallets, has no shortage of features. It brings to the table something that the most popular WAX wallet lacks — security — and is poised for a breakthrough as the blockchain gains more and more users due to its low fees.
Anchor bolsters security by giving you the private keys or seed phrase to your wallet. This design is far different from custodial wallets like the WAX Cloud Wallet, where users never actually see their seed phrase and that data stays on a centralized server.
The Anchor Wallet is available in two forms: desktop and mobile. On desktop, it is available on devices having a Windows, macOS, or Linux operating system. On mobile, the Anchor Wallet works on iOS and Android devices.
You will have to pay a small fee on mobile to get started —$1.99 for a WAX account. In the desktop version, you can toggle between different blockchains. Under the section labeled “cryptocurrencies,” you can see the USD value of your tokens, how many tokens are staked, and how many tokens are delegated.
You have several display options for the app as well, including a “select your language” feature and having the system automatically lock you out if you’ve been idle for a certain amount of time. There are other security features you can toggle on to keep your account on the desktop safe.
With Anchor, you can connect to Atomic Hub, the most popular WAX marketplace, and perform all the functions you would with a WAX Cloud Wallet but more securely. That means predominantly buying, selling, and storing NFTs.
To acquire the Anchor Wallet, head over to the Greymass website and follow the instructions.
Best 3 NFT Hardware Wallets
And now, to hardware wallets.
A hardware wallet, sometimes called a “cold wallet” or “hard wallet,” is a wallet where assets are moved off a computer or electronic device and stored. This design creates an extra layer of protection for crypto users, as it is much harder to retrieve assets from cold wallets.
While there is some mixed information about whether you can store your NFTs directly on a cold wallet, there is one security measure you can certainly take with a cold wallet: move your hot wallet’s private keys over to it, thereby removing your private keys from your electronic device.
When the cold wallet removes the hot wallet’s private key from the electronic device, malware can’t find the private key. This extra security prevents the malware from relaying the private key to a thief, who can use the key to access the wallet.
Moving the private key to the hard wallet also creates an additional layer of protection. You need to use the cold wallet’s seed phrase to sign off on transactions, thereby giving the NFT owner an extra amount of time to think before signing permissions to a site that might look suspicious.
While there is no way for an NFT to be hacked, many NFT owners have lost their assets by signing permissions to a suspicious site when sleepy or not paying attention.
Now, here are the three best hard wallet companies on the market today.
#1 – Ledger
- When founded: 2014
- Tokens Supported: 1,800+
Ledger is one of the biggest names in the hard wallet industry, and it’s easy to see why: Their wallets are lightweight, inconspicuous, and affordable. There are two wallets worth noting:
- Ledger Nano X. Compatible with over 50 wallets and having a screen of 128 x 64 pixels, the Ledger Nano X is the more expensive and most robust version of Ledger wallets. It is over twice as heavy as the Nano S and has a battery life of eight hours in standby mode.
- Ledger Nano S. Lightweight and less expensive than the Nano X, the Nano S is Ledger’s best-selling model. It is compatible with over 1,000 crypto assets and can manage up to six apps depending on the apps’ sizes.
Both wallets have a certified secure chip, a 24-word recovery phrase, and the ability to connect to Ledger Live, which allows you to manage coins from the app. They also come with a PIN setting for added security.
The Nano X and the Nano S are inconspicuous too, appearing like simple USB devices on the surface. Because they blend in as ordinary objects, you may be safer if you take one in public compared to another hardware wallet. If someone were to see a Nano, they might not think anything of it.
There is a wide difference in price between the two models, with the Nano X selling for $135 and the Nano S selling for $67. If you’re considering buying a Ledger, always buy new, and buy from a trusted seller. If you buy it used, there’s a possibility someone already has the seed phrase for the device and could be waiting for you to load assets onto it before stealing it.
To purchase a Ledger wallet, go to the Ledger website.
#2 – Trezor
- When founded: 2013
- Tokens Supported: 1,800+
Trezor was founded in 2013 and has two major hardware wallets on the market: the Trezor Model T and the Trezor One. As the OG hardware wallet provider, Trezor has created these two wallets with something to offer, including the management of thousands of coins and a big helping of security.
- Trezor Model T: This Trezor wallet supports over 1,000 tokens, has a full-color screen display, and allows you to manage your security features on the Trezor itself. It is more expensive than the Trezor One.
- Trezor One: This is a more rudimentary version of the Trezor Model T. It is set at a more affordable price, contains robust features, and still supports over 1,000 different tokens. It comes with Bitcoin-only firmware and password management on the cloud.
There are some key security differences between the two devices. While you can manage your security features on the Trezor Model T itself, you can only do so via computer or mobile device with the Trezor One.
The Trezor Model T also comes with additional features: Shamir backup, FID02 authentication, and a microSD card. Eventually, the Model T will have data and file encryption as well.
With the differences in features comes a wide separation in price as well. The Trezor One runs for around $60, while the Trezor Model T has a list price of $214. Fortunately, even with the price difference, both store private keys for other wallets offline, thereby reducing the possibility of a malware attack that steals your private key or seed phrase from your computer.
The functionality of storing private keys offline makes this a helpful addition to bolster security if you’re an NFT trader.
To buy a Trezor, head to its website — Trezor.io — and click on the “products” tab.
#3 – SafePal
- When founded: 2018
- Tokens Supported: 30,000+
SafePal is the relatively new kid on the block, founded in 2018, years after Trezor and Ledger. But its S1 Hardware Wallet has security features that even the wallets of the first two companies lack — some that could make your NFTs even more secure.
The S1 — which looks like a black credit card and runs for about $50 — is the first hardware wallet backed by cryptocurrency giant Binance. And it looks and operates like something from a Mission Impossible movie.
Unlike the hardware wallets of the other two brands, the S1 doesn’t connect physically to any of your devices. Instead, it uses an air-gapped approach with multiple layers of security sensors. It doesn’t need Bluetooth, Wifi, or a USB port, making it slightly safer on that level, and it has other features like a true random number generator and firmware to bolster its security.
It beats out the number of supported coins in the wallets of the other brands as well. The S1 supports 32 blockchains and over 30,000 tokens, with unlimited currency storage and the ability to delete and add tokens as you go.
The S1 goes an extra step too. If your wallet is compromised and you wish to destroy everything that’s on it, there’s a self-destruction option that will destroy the contents of your wallet.
The company also offers a stainless steel seed phrase cipher where you can store the seed phrase in a device that is resistant to water, fire, and acid damage.
SafePal adds a new level for crypto-security, even more so than the previous two brands. Like Ledger and Trezor, SafePal has a website where you can buy its products.
Conclusion
Now you know the differences between hot wallets and cold wallets, why you should invest in a cold wallet, and our top 10 picks for the best wallets in NFT trading overall. Always remember never to give out your seed phrase and store it in a secure place, offline, where malware can’t get it.