Crypto Wallet: Ledger Recover is Postponed
The hardware wallet company Ledgerafter a rather disastrous week marked by a barrage of criticism from the community, the launch of Ledger Recover is postponed.
Below are all the details.
What happened to the Ledger portfolio company?
In a Twitter Space on May 23, attended by more than 13,000 users, Ledger President and CEO Pascal Gauthier said it had been a “humbling experience” and a tough lesson in communication:
“This experience was very humiliating. We miscommunicated when launching this product; it was not our intention to surprise people. So for that reason we understand the direction of the community and apologize for the miscommunication.”
Ledger found himself in a public relations nightmare after revealing plans on May 16 to introduce a key recovery tool called Restore ledger:
The firmware update allows users who have lost their personal seed phrase to retrieve it through an optional feature.
The company faced backlash from some members of the crypto community who believed this would add a “backdoor” for removing a user’s private keys from the device.
Ledger’s future intentions
Gauthier revealed that in response to concerns about the launch of Ledger Recover, the company would accelerate its plans to open source more of its code base.
It starts with the core components of the operating system and Ledger Recover:
Charles GuillemetLedger’s chief technology officer said that in the coming days a white paper on the Recover protocol becomes open source along with technical blog posts to “explain the principles of Recover” and provide more detailed explanations of how the process works.
“It becomes very easy and obvious for any cryptography and security expert to look at the protocol to get more assurances and understand how it works.”
Guillemet noted that this would also allow developers to create their own backup provider for seed phrase fragments instead of using the one provided by Ledger:
Ledger community dissatisfaction after the release of the latest feature
As expected, several members of the cryptocurrency community, including Ledger wallet owners, took to social media to express their discontent following the release of Ledger’s latest feature.
The wallet provider shared that Ledger Recover has a optional subscription for users who want to backup their secret recovery phrase. The company had even explained:
“You don’t have to use it and you can continue to manage your recovery phrase yourself if you bought a ledger to do so.”
However, the concept infuriated many in the cryptocurrency community, including security specialists.
In particular, Mudit Guptachief information security officer at Polygon Labs, shared:
Investor and podcaster Chris Dunnreferring to the Ledger data breach that exposed user information in 2020, also wrote:
“First, they disclosed the postal addresses, telephone numbers and email addresses of their customers. And now they’ve put a back door in the seed sentences. It is time to say goodbye to Ledger.”