It seems that the old adage ‘the customer is always right’ has rung true for Ledger, the well-known hardware wallet company, which has chosen to hold off on its Ledger Recover launch following a storm of criticism from the crypto community.
Pascal Gauthier, the CEO of Ledger, took to Twitter Spaces for a sobering discussion, attended by over 13,000 users, where he admitted that the week had been a “humbling experience”. He conceded that Ledger had “miscommunicated” the launch of their new service, stating that the company hadn’t intended to blindside its users. In a bid to quell the outcry, Ledger has decided to fast-track the process of open-sourcing more of its codebase, beginning with the operating system’s core components and the contentious Ledger Recover tool.
The uproar was sparked when Ledger revealed plans for a firmware update that would feature the Ledger Recover tool, enabling users to retrieve lost private seed phrases. Critics from the crypto community were quick to voice their concerns, fearing this update could create a “backdoor” for private keys to be compromised.
Charles Guillemet, Ledger’s CTO, has tried to address these fears by announcing upcoming open-source whitepapers on the Recover Protocol and technical blog posts elucidating the principles of Recover. He noted, “It’s 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.” This move will also enable developers to create their own backup provider for seed phrase shards.
This is an important turning point for Ledger as it reiterates the significance of transparency and community trust in the world of crypto. In the wake of the backlash, the company has shown its commitment to aligning its actions with the community’s concerns and expectations.