Trezor is the main beneficiary of the Ledger Recover blunder. The Ledger rival reported a spike in sales in recent days following the revelation that Ledger added a seed recovery feature that could compromise the security of the assets stored in their wallets. The opt-in feature has had many Ledger users wondering how safe their stored assets are on Ledger devices.
The week-over-week sales report shows that Trezor sales have increased by over 900% as the company continues to emphasize transparency, assuring users of their dedication to open source code. To back their words with action, the company, on May 23, wrote in a Twitter post,
“We have decided to accelerate our open-sourcing roadmap to bring more verifiability to everything we do.”
This was after emphasizing that self-custody is an integral part of their operation and success.
An assurance to Trezor users
In a clear swipe at Ledger’s decision to give users of their wallets the option of recovering seeds via third-party friends, Matj ák, the CEO of Trezor, said:
“At Trezor, we believe that hardware wallets should not, at any time, make the seed phrase available to anyone other than the user.”
Remedy for a mistake
This is the time that Ledger, in an apparent bid to minimize the impact of the Recover feature on their customers, also moved to open source their codes. The Ledger team seemed to acknowledge the fact that the Recover feature was a true blunder, as seen in the May 23 comment of the company’s CEO, Pascal Gauthier. Gauthier, during an emergency AMA on Twitter, said,
“This experience has been humbling. We want to do right by our customers and community. Everybody makes mistakes, and how quickly can we fix them? We come to the community with answers to your questions.”
Why Ledger was hesitant over open source
On his own part, the company’s chief technology officer (CTO), Charles Guillemet, said that the company has not lost sight of its vision to help users secure their digital assets. He said that they’ve put in place an accelerated roadmap to ensure that all the company does is open to public scrutiny.
He highlighted that the main challenge to opening Ledger code to the public is the fact that the smartcard technology that guarantees its root of trust needs to be preserved considering that the device goes through a complex distribution channel.
It is not yet certain whether Ledger’s plan to accelerate the open source of its codes would bring back the plummeting confidence of its customers in the wake of the Recover outrage. In the meantime, Trezor seems to be the main beneficiary of Ledger’s oversight.
