Ledger delays plans for controversial “recovery” service, announces open-source roadmap

Crypto hardware wallet provider Ledger will delay plans to launch its private key recovery service after receiving major backlash following its announcement last week.

The controversy — which raised questions about the safety and reliability of Ledger devices more broadly — prompted the company to accelerate its open-sourcing roadmap.

Ledger’s Apology

Ledger CEO Pascal Gauthier launched a public apology on Tuesday for the way Ledger’s “recovery” service was initially disclosed to the public.

“Our inadvertent communication mistake took everyone by surprise and affected our customers’ ability to correctly understand laser recovery,” Gauthier said. “We never meant to surprise you.”

Ledger Recovery, announced last week, is an upcoming paid subscription service for Ledger Nano X users that gives them a way to recover their crypto in the event they lose both their device and the paper-backup seed phrase. On a technical level, this involves breaking a user’s private key into three encrypted “shards” and storing each shard with Ledger, Coincover, and other third parties.

the service was comprehensive criticized To highlight that Ledger could potentially take users’ private keys from their devices with a malicious firmware update. Concerns grew at the end of the week when Ledger Support Claimed (in a now deleted tweet) that customers have always “trusted” Ledger to not release such malicious code “whether you know it or not.”

one in podcast episodes Of what did bitcoin do Posted on Monday, Gauthier also said that custodians of the ledger could be forced to confiscate a customer’s private keys if subpoenaed by the government.

Ledger CEO Pascal Gauthier explains that Ledger Recover will give the state the ability to recover your #bitcoin Private keys in case of summons. pic.twitter.com/KWaXcgtMqr

— ₿itcoin Therapist (@TheBTCTherapist) May 22, 2023

Ledger still plans to move forward with a “clarified version” of Ledger Recover in the future, which will respond to the expressed “sticking points” of the community.

“The main concerns you expressed are around transparency, censorship resistance and security,” Gauthier said. “I think we’ve done a good job of alleviating all of your concerns.”

open-source roadmap

Ledger CTO Charles Guillemette Detailed How the company will open-source more of its software going forward as a commitment to maximum transparency. “Open-source” code refers to code that is publicly viewable and verifiable.

The firm recently open-sourced its cryptography library, and will soon release its Ledger Recover whitepaper, enabling anyone to “audit cryptographic protocols and people to build their own shard backup provider”. “

Ledger plans to “gradually” open source most of its operating system, but still cannot fully open-source its firmware due to IP agreements with the makers of its smartcard chips, which power the devices. deters hostile attackers with physical access to

The CTO concluded, “Open sourcing has always been at the core of our roadmap, and recent events have emphasized the importance of accelerating our initiatives to bring greater verifiability to everything we do at Ledger. ”