The crypto community reacted angrily to the debut of Ledger Recover, a service that lets users of the hardware wallet back up their secret recovery phrases.
Ledger co-founder and former CEO Éric Larchevêque, who worked at the company from 2014 to 2019, saw the criticism directed at the wallet as a pure PR failure, not a technological one.
A company upgrade included a subscription-based function named “Recover.” In addition, the problematic feature gave the firm access to client seed phrases and required verification credentials. This contradicts Ledger‘s core reason d’être, which is privacy and security.
Larchevêque added:
“I‘m devastated to come on this subreddit, that I created nine years ago, to see images of Ledger devices burning, insults and lot and lot of anger. I’m honestly to the verge of tears.”
His first action as a co-founder was to apologize for how the launch was handled. He did, however, defend the technique, stating:
“To me, all this meltdown is a total PR failure, but absolutely not a technical one.”
He said that the Recover update has no effect on the security concept of the hardware wallet. He went on to say:
“My mistake as a CEO during my tenure was probably not be relentless enough about explaining the security model, but at some point you just give up as people dont care at all. Until they care again, like now.”
The ex-CEO claimed that the only thing that had changed was the general users perception of trustlessness and that the firmwares Recover code was not malicious:
“Ledger is still safe, there is no backdoor, the Ledger Recover is not a conspiracy, no one will ever force anyone to use Recover.”
According to him, the FUD and controversy that erupted in the aftermath of the update did not help things. The security model is the same as it was before customers were aware of Ledger Recover. Trusting Ledger by sharding the seed phrase is analogous to trusting the wallet with transaction signing, according to Larchevêque. In response to a user‘s suggestion to have two distinct firmware versions to eliminate backdoor issues, he said that it wouldn’t alter anything and would be disappointing for him personally.
Its not the first time Ledger has been involved in a contentious public relations debacle. That is also not the first time that corporate leaders have defended their products at the cost of their consumers.
It was chastised in April for advertising a necklace as part of the Ledger Nano X OnChain crypto wallet. The company entirely ignored the fact that wearing a hardware wallet around your neck violates every security standard in the book.