Original | Odaily Planet Daily ( @OdailyChina )
Author: Azuma ( @azuma_eth )
Ledger, the "king of hard wallets", has recently been caught in a whirlpool of public opinion.
The cause of the incident is that Ledger recently officially announced that due to memory limitations, it will gradually phase out its once flagship product Ledger Nano S, and is expected to gradually stop supporting the development of the wallet by the end of 2025. In the future, it will no longer accept new application submissions, feature enhancements or application updates for Nano S. Therefore, users are advised to upgrade their devices to the newer Nano S Plus, Nano X or Stax.
Ledger's announcement caused an uproar in the community because Nano S is the company's best-selling hard wallet and even in the entire history of cryptocurrency. To this day, a large number of users are still using this wallet to store assets. The sudden announcement of discontinuation of support means that a large number of users have to consider alternatives as soon as possible.
Nano S was first launched in 2016. Ledger officials once stated that this hard wallet sold more than 1.5 million units in the first three years. Calculated at the launch price of 79 euros, this means that as early as 2019, Ledger achieved sales of more than 118 million US dollars through this wallet. This made great contributions to Ledger's subsequent gradual seizure of market share and eventually becoming the "King of Hard Wallets". It can be called Ledger's own "iPhone 4" moment.
In response to Ledger's sudden announcement, a large number of users expressed their dissatisfaction on social media. Some accused Ledger of being greedy, while others warned that migrating devices may lead to additional phishing risks.
Well-known KOL @sudo took the lead in launching the attack:
Ledger is so mean. You are forcing everyone to buy new devices and re-enter their seed phrases. The Ledger Nano S is still awesome. I understand you need to make money, but please don't joke about backward compatibility. You are one of the few trustworthy companies and now you are limiting new features and access because of business considerations? This is really mean.
Another overseas KOL @CryptoCharged, who has been using Ledger products for many years, also expressed disappointment.
As a 7 year Ledger customer , this announcement is really frustrating... It's normal to eventually stop supporting updates and patches for older hardware over time, but to announce this end of support this year when you were actively selling these devices last year is simply criminal. You should allow customers who bought a Nano S in the last 12 months the option to trade their Nano S for a Nano X or Flex and pay the difference. Do something nice, Ledger.
NFT collector @BAYC 5511 directly called for a boycott of Ledger:
What the f*ck is this, Ledger ??? Why did you stop supporting the Nano S? I’m sure a lot of people will use this device as their primary hard wallet in 2021-2023. This company is worthless, never buying Ledger products again.
Ledger responded to the community’s condemnation in a timely manner, with official accounts and senior personal accounts responding one after another.
Ledger CTO Charles Guillemet provided further explanation of the announcement: " Launched in 2016, the Nano S defined the concept of self-custody in an era when BTC was only for holding. But nearly a decade later, as cryptocurrencies and their use cases have continued to evolve, so has the hardware that secures them, so we have updated the product to meet today's needs. Why the transformation? Because its memory has limited its upgrades, the Ledger Nano S initially performed strongly, but as blockchain has rapidly evolved, it has been unable to support new applications, feature submissions, or application updates. LedgerOS, Bitcoin, Ethereum, and exchange applications alone almost fill its 320kb of memory, leaving little room for other applications. This memory limitation prevents the Nano S from supporting many newer features and necessary security enhancements."
Charles and the official Ledger account added: “ BTC, ETH, and other mainstream applications will still work on Nano S for the foreseeable future. It still supports basic operations such as sending, receiving, buying, selling, and exchanging. But due to technical limitations, it no longer receives the latest features or upgrades — including the latest improvements in usability and security. ”
It is worth mentioning that, perhaps in order to avoid angering the community, Ledger also revised the wording of the earliest announcement. From the comparison of the following figure (the first old version and the second new version), the wording of the two versions is obviously much softer.
Seeing that Ledger has “run into trouble”, competitors targeting the hard wallet market will certainly not miss the opportunity.
Zach Herbert, founder of FOUNDATION (which is about to release the Passport Prime wallet), commented that Ledger’s decision to stop supporting Nano S was four-fold wrong.
First, Ledger is still selling Nano S until the first quarter of 2022 (Odaily Note: The sales cycle here is inconsistent with @CryptoCharged's statement. It should be that Ledger officially stopped selling it in 2022, but other channels can still buy Nano S stocks in recent years) , and many users have only used it for more than 3 years. In contrast, iPhone 11 (released in 2019) still supports iOS 26 updates, and the security life cycle of hardware wallets should be longer.
Second, the security standards of hardware wallets should be higher than those of smartphones. Apple even provides security patches for devices that have stopped updating iOS for up to 10 years. Technically, Ledger is fully capable of continuing to receive basic security updates for Nano S , but Ledger chose to give up.
Third, Ledger applications on Bitcoin and Ethereum are open source, and streamlined versions could have been maintained by the community. However, the reality is that Ledger's closed ecosystem prohibits developers from submitting or modifying applications independently, and everything requires official approval.
Fourth, the number of Nano S users is conservatively estimated to be over 4 million (accounting for more than half of Ledger's total sales). If users switch to new devices, Ledger can easily earn over $500 million in revenue . Ledger officials used terms such as "no guarantee of support", and the vague statements created panic and deliberately increased user anxiety to promote device replacement.
Zach Herbert finally called out to Ledger users and developers, saying that the company will launch a convenient way for Ledger users to seamlessly switch to Passport Prime, which is obviously aimed at the cake in Ledger's bowl.
The hard wallet market is a market with relatively slow iterations and a reputation that is crucial. This incident may only be a matter of public opinion, but it may have a long-term impact on Ledger’s reputation. In the worst case, it may even make users hesitate when purchasing Ledger products and worry about subsequent compatibility issues. Whether Ledger, which has been sitting firmly on the throne of the hard wallet market for many years, will be shaken by this, time will eventually tell us the answer.
