As a reminder, Ledger Recover is designed for novice cryptocurrency users who haven’t yet learned how to carefully guard their own sido – a unique combination of 12, 18 or 24 words to access the contents of an address in the blockchain. In the case of Ledger devices, a 24-word phrase is generated.

The function involves splitting this phrase into three parts, or shards, and then encrypting them. The data is then sent to three separate storage companies. If the user loses the sido, they will be able to confirm their identity with their documents and regain access to the cryptocurrencies.

There were two main concerns amongst seasoned hardware wallet users. Firstly, they weren’t aware that the cid-phrase could in principle leave the device, something that Ledger staff have really emphasised recently.

Secondly, they feared the prospect of their coins being stolen by the government, which could sue the shard holding companies and restore access to the user’s coins with the help of the latter. And as Ledger CEO Pascal Gauthier confirmed the day before, such a scenario could indeed happen.

In general, Ledger Recover has raised a lot of questions and panic. Consequently, the Ledger staff decided to postpone the release before properly explaining how the feature works.

What will happen to the Ledger Recover feature?

Last night, the company’s management held a Twitter airing in which they announced the decision to postpone the launch of Ledger Recover. Employees also promised to increase transparency of their own developments, as well as answering questions from listeners.

Ledger's top representatives included company chief Pascal Gauthier, CXO Iain Rogers, co-founder Eric Larcheveque and Ledger's technical head Charles Guillaume.

Guillaume noted that “transparency and ease of use” will remain the company’s top priorities. That said, it cannot fully disclose the code of Ledger’s wallet software due to the need to ensure its security and non-disclosure agreement. However, there will be more open source code from Ledger, in addition the company’s management has shared a roadmap of its initiatives.

According to Decrypt’s sources, the document notes that the SDK, over 150 applications and a cryptographic library are already in the public domain. Ledger plans to make the following available to customers in the coming days and weeks:

• cid-phrase recovery protocol whitepaper;
• educational material on the topic;
• blog posts explaining the basics of cybersecurity;
• tools to integrate their own shard recovery providers;
• technical information on the wallet operating system module that is responsible for the sido-phrase recovery process.

Given the community’s criticism, Ledger has decided to make the choice of providers more decentralised, as well as disclose more information about the process itself. That said, all code around the wallet security core will remain private, which Guillaume also commented on in his tweets.

As you probably know, your Ledger devices use a security chip that allows you to resist intruders even with physical access to the device. Smart card technology also provides a degree of trust, allowing the chip to ‘prove’ that it is genuine and not tampered with, so it can be trusted even in complex supply chain scenarios. Since this know-how is the intellectual property of the manufacturers, they don’t want it leaked.

Ledger will also not be taking the recovery process beyond wallets, meaning the company has no plans to create a new project for this feature. Charles continues.

Openness has always been at the heart of our roadmap, and recent developments highlight the importance of accelerating our initiative to be more transparent about everything we do at Ledger.

Representatives from Trezor, another popular hardware wallet maker that uses open source, responded to Ledger’s announcement. In a tweet, they joked that they’d allegedly decided to step up their own open-source efforts. And they’ve already done so.


However, it's not exactly a fair joke. As Ledger employees have repeatedly pointed out, they can't release the software code to the public because they have signed non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) with various component manufacturers. For instance, this is definitely prevented by the security chip, the details of which, according to the agreement with the manufacturer, must remain hidden.

In addition, the Trezor hardware wallets could theoretically have malware installed on them as well - and users without development skills would have no way of countering it. So, in this situation, open source does not solve anything, and when using any hardware, users have to trust its developers one way or another.


Guillaume summed up the situation. According to him, the failed announcement of Ledger Recover and the further postponement of the service launch was a “humbling experience of interacting with the community”, which will help in making future decisions.

Towards the end of the conversation, Ledger executive Pascal Gauthier was asked what the company would do in the event of a lawsuit with government authorities. A user nicknamed ZK-shark wanted to know if the giant would give access to its users’ sido phrases in case of a request from the authorities.

Gauthier made it clear that such a thing had never happened before, so he was not in a position to answer for sure.

We will always support our own users, but what will happen in the event of a lawsuit is unknown.

Pascal added that the decision will depend on each individual case. That said, “if a user has reasonable doubts, they are better off not using the service”.

Although the release of Ledger Recover has been cancelled in the near future, the company is not about to give up on its long-term plans. A similar sideline recovery will become a reality in the future, with the giant’s management still confident that the new feature will make it easier for newcomers to interact with the world of cryptocurrencies.

Still, the latter will not have to worry about possibly losing their recovery phrase sheet and losing all their coins accordingly. Should anything happen, people will be able to use the Ledger Recover service and regain access to their own addresses.


We listened to Ledger management's Twitter feed yesterday and learned a curious bit of trivia. It turns out that the developers have specifically designed the Ledger Recover service so that users don't have to enter the sid-phrase manually. Accordingly, the separation and encryption of the 24 words will be done automatically by the hardware wallet.

This is to protect users from possible phishing attacks, whose authors try to trick potential victims into stealing the unique combination. And since users won't have to enter the sido on any platform, they will essentially be protected from such attempts to steal assets.



Ledger seems to have come out of the unfortunate situation in the best possible way. Experienced users will now not have to worry that their coins might strangely disappear due to an unexpected innovation. At the same time, the Ledger Recover feature itself will be much more trustworthy once its code is published, which means that newcomers will actually use it. Obviously it should have been announced in a different sequence, but that's exactly how it happened.


Look for more interesting things in our crypto chat of ex-wealthy people. There waiting for the onset of a new bullrun, which will happen sooner or later.