Crypto wallet manufacturer Ledger has announced an optional paid feature called “Recovery”.
The new feature released by the company allows users to backup and restore their own custom seed phrases. However, this announcement caused harsh criticism in the crypto community.
Ledger CEO Clarifies Criticism
After raising concerns about Ledger’s security aspects, the company decided to delay the launch of the service. Chief technology officer Charles Guillemet announced that they will work to accelerate the open source roadmap to improve Ledger’s credibility.
Ledger CEO Pascal Gauthier told Cointelegraph that Ledger Recover will launch when the company makes the code for the Recover protocol open source. Emphasizing that the new service is optional, Gauthier said:
“Many people find managing 24 words intimidating or complicated. Ledger Recover was designed entirely on demand and aims to help these individuals facilitate secure personal surveillance without compromising security.”
Ledger’s mission is, and will always be, to provide our users with the right tools to own their digital value securely.
We have decided to accelerate our open-sourcing roadmap to bring more verifiability to everything we do.
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— Charles Guillemet (@P3b7_) May 23, 2023
According to Gauthier, the goal of Ledger Recover is to engage the next 100 million users in the crypto industry. However, this concept has plagued many of the current Ledger users. Shahar Madar, head of security products at Fireblocks, stated that Ledger Recover goes against the core ideals of Ledger customers. “Allowing a user to recover their full private key to a brand new device with only one form of identification allows providers to collude and initiate the process without proper identification and authorization,” Madar said.
