The hardware wallet company Ledger, after a rather catastrophic week marked by a barrage of community criticism, postpones the launch of Ledger Recover.
Below are all the details.
What happened to the wallet company Ledger?
In a Twitter Space on 23 May, attended by greaterย than 13,000 users, Ledger President and CEO Pascal Gauthier stated it had been a โhumbling experienceโ and a tough lesson in communication:ย
โThis experience was very humbling. We miscommunicated at the launch of this product; it was not our intention to take people by surprise. So for that reason, we understand the direction of the community and apologize for the miscommunication.โ
Ledger found itself in a public relations nightmare after revealing plans on 16 May to introduce a key recovery tool wasย known Ledger Recover:ย ย
I want to address the feedback over Ledger Recover, the way it was communicated, and share our path forward. Read my letter and join our town hall with our leadership team to learn more.
pic.twitter.com/juVBOpWeeG
— Pascal Gauthier @Ledger (@_pgauthier) May 23, 2023
The firmware update would allow users who have lost their private seed phrase to retrieve it through an optional feature.
The company faced backlash from some members of the cryptographic community who believed this would add a โbackdoorโ for removing a userโs private keys from the device.
Ledgerโs future intentions
Gauthier revealed that in response to concerns about the launch of Ledger Recover, the company would accelerate its intendsย to make more of its code base open source.
It will start with the core components of its operating system and Ledger Recover:
Charles Guillemet, chief technology officer of Ledger, stated that in the coming days a white paper on the Recover protocol will become open source along with technical blog posts to โexplain the principles of Recoverโ and to provide more detailed explanations of how theย procedure works.
โItโs going to be very easy and clear for every single cryptography and security expert to have a look at the protocol to get more guarantees and understand how it works.โ
Guillemet pointedย outย that this would likewise allow developers to create their own backup provider for seed phrase fragments rather than using the one offered by Ledger:
Ledgerโs mission is, and will always be, to provide our users with the right tools to own their digital value securely.We have decided to accelerate our open-sourcing roadmap to attract more verifiability to everything we do.A thread
pic.twitter.com/Dv0jBCM4Ys
— Charles Guillemet (@P3b7_) May 23, 2023
Ledger community discontent following the release of the latest feature
As anticipated, plentyย of members of the digitalย currency community, including Ledger wallet owners, took to social media to express their discontent following the release of Ledgerโs latest feature.ย
The wallet provider shared that Ledger Recover is an optional subscription for users who wish to back up their secret recovery phrase. Inย reality, the company had explained:
โYou donโt have to use it, and you can continue to manage your recovery phrase yourself if thatโs why you purchased a ledger.โ
Nonetheless, the concept infuriated numerous in the digitalย currency community, including security specialists.
Inย particular, Mudit Gupta, chief information security officer at Polygon Labs, shared:
Investor and podcaster Chris Dunn, referring to the Ledger data leak that exposed usersโ information in 2020, likewise wrote:
โFirst, they exposed their customersโ mailing addresses, phone numbers, and email addresses. And now theyโve put a back door into the seed sentences. Itโs time toย emphasize goodbye to Ledger.โ
