“They’ve lost our trust.”

“They’ve deceived us.”

“They can no longer be reliable for my crypto.”

“They only care about making money.”

“They will no longer be my main wallet.”

“They’re done.”

If it wasn’t for years of crypto bros solely suggesting a Ledger wallet to newcomers do you think we’d be in this situation? A Ledger wallet surely does have its obvious merits but understanding the context of this controversy isn’t as important as understanding your own knowledge of crypto wallets. As someone who’s in the crypto wallet business, fighting off the constant comparison of “this” versus the industry leader Ledger is a never ending battle of frustration knowing that the opposer’s knowledge is as fragile as the hardware itself.

“It’s safe & complete self-custody!” they’d vigorously defend as they doxx themselves on Twitter with their ENS (sitting adjacent to their NFT pfp) flashing on every tweet of them partying at the monthly crypto conference.

The Recover service news flash by Ledger was more of an intriguing one rather than an alarming one for me. As long as you continuously rely on the software to create your keys after a naive tap of a simple “Create Wallet” button, this is far from a feeling of betrayal. In fact, it’s an industry first: Backup recovery services for retail users.

Rather than spouting out “Ledger” on every instance, take the time to discover the other wallets in the ecosystem. You’d be surprised to find a healthy breadth and depth of wallets out there all with an ample amount of adequate UI/UX you can rely on. As quoted in a previous blog I wrote, “So why shun other wallet tech when in fact deepening the gamut obviates the reliance on just a few. Hardcore privacy folks tend to disparage anything less than abc, but doing so inadvertently centralizes the wallet market.”

Every cycle will mint a new generation of users that don’t share the same principles as the one before it. The Class of 2021 will have no idea what it was like using an exchange without KYC. The Class of 2017 will have no idea what it’s like storing a wallet.dat file. And so on and so forth. 

This PR debacle brought forth by Ledger should actually be taken as a blessing. Informing the ignorant uninformed in this manner makes everyone more knowledgeable. Oh, you thought your Ledger was unfettered from any spectrum of trust?

I, for one, would not use the Ledger Recover service. I’ve always gravitated towards a more artisanal approach to private key/wallet security but it’s not to say I appreciate the optionality for it. As goes the optionality to purchase Ledger’s vanity chain…

Take the time to understand deeper on what Ledger is attempting to accomplish here ladies and gentlemen. It’s all a harbinger of what’s to come. They’re looking at the NEXT billion, along with a lot of other wallet teams that are coming out with similar flavors: account abstraction, MPC, social recovery, etc. Sure one could say more education is needed for proper “DIY” self-custody but it would be insulting to say that  Ledger hasn’t been focused on that front either. They’re probably the biggest proponent of self-custody in terms of educational content created and media spend. Ledger realizes that not everyone is going to need to know jiu-jitsu or proper self-defense techniques in panic situations, but rather outsourcing that could give those with other priorities a peace of mind.