Ledger Caves to Pressure and Puts Key Recovery Service on Hold; Will Publish Code as Open-Source

In an exclusive statement, Ledger CEO, Pascal Gauthier, humbly acknowledged the past week’s events and offered his apologies for the firm’s miscommunication. Gauthier took the opportunity to address concerns regarding Ledger Recover and its announcement while sharing the company’s improved path forward.

Open-Source Future

Gauthier highlighted Ledger’s significant progress in the past two years towards their mission of bolstering the world of digital assets with top-tier security, ensuring ease of use for a wider user base, all while never compromising on security. He emphasized that this commitment remains unwavering with Ledger Recover, now provided by Coincover.

The unintended communication error took the community by surprise, impacting customers’ understanding of Ledger Recover’s role in the growing crypto and blockchain landscape and its implications for Ledger’s future offerings. Gauthier expressed remorse for the way the information was conveyed and clarified that the company never intended to surprise its users.

He further explained that Ledger had been discussing this product publicly for over a year, underlining the lessons learned from this experience and the improved communication strategies to be implemented in the future.

Gauthier emphasized the need for a service like Ledger Recover, stating that those with a long history in the space, including himself with over a decade of experience, bear the responsibility of ensuring everyone can have self-sovereignty and custody over their digital assets.

He identified seed phrase recovery as a pain point in crypto self-custody adoption, noting that the majority of users either lack ownership of their private keys or employ less secure methods of self-custody and seed phrase storage.

Under the subheading “What is the solution going forward? Security (always) & increased transparency!” Gauthier reiterated Ledger’s unwavering commitment to security and resilience over time. He emphasized that Ledger remains the only certified hardware wallet chosen by Consumer Reports as the best hardware wallet, backed by security experts.

Gauthier highlighted the company’s Donjon security team’s autonomy in reviewing not only Ledger’s firmware and hardware updates but also those of the entire ecosystem.

Regarding transparency, Gauthier highlighted that a significant portion of Ledger’s codebase is already open source, allowing developers and security experts to review the code for any potential vulnerabilities. He specifically mentioned that all 150 Ledger Nano applications, Ledger Live, and a portion of the operating system are open source.

Gauthier expressed the company’s commitment to accelerating their open-source roadmap, starting with core components of the operating system and Ledger Recover. Furthermore, the Ledger Recover protocol will also be open-sourced, granting the community more choices in their self-custody solutions.

Gauthier concluded by emphasizing that these measures are being taken to move forward together, offering security and self-custody to the next wave of crypto users. He assured customers that their Ledger’s security remains unchanged and highlighted the additional security measure of enabling the passphrase feature to prevent unauthorized access to funds.

Gauthier reiterated that this commitment to transparency does not compromise the security of users’ devices.