Former

Ledger CEO Expresses Devastation Over PR Disaster and Device Controversy

The former chief executive of crypto hardware wallet manufacturer Ledger has spoken out about the latest company fiasco.

On May 18, Ledger co-founder and CEO from 2014 to 2019, Éric Larchevêque, took to Reddit to express his views on what he described as a “horrible mess.”

The controversial crypto firm was lambasted this week for launching a service that gave it control over the storage of seed phrases.

Ledger is Not Trustless

A subscriptionbased feature called “Recover” was rolled out in a firmware update. Furthermore, the contentious feature granted the company access to customer seed phrases and demanded KYC credentials. This goes against the privacy and security that Ledger touts as its primary raison d’être.

Larchevêque commented:

“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 step was to apologize as a cofounder for how this launch was handled. However, he defended the technology stating, “To me, all this meltdown is a total PR failure, but absolutely not a technical one.”

He added that many people believed Ledger was a trustless solution, which it is not. “Some amount of trust must be placed into Ledger to use their product,” he said before adding.