Why I wouldn't buy Ledger Nano S ever again?

[DireWolfM14]

so I am predicting they will create some update that will make model S unusable in reality... maybe with much bigger ledger coin apps.
Excuse could be that they are doing this for ''safety and security'' of their beloved customers  

It's obvious that sooner or later that's what will happen. The point is the "when". I hope that it'll happen only after the chip shortage loosen up and SeedSigner becomes more mature too.

I agree, it's bound to happen eventually.  Any excuse they come up with will have to be evaluated at the time for validity.  Companies are in business to make money, and selling hard goods is a tough business to be in.  I know from experience.  You sell one hardware wallet to someone, and that's probably the only one they'll buy for the next 5 years.

I've been a manufacturing worker in various industries for nearly 30 years, and I've seen companies I've worked for use different strategies to stay relevant while also supporting their old clients as best as they can.  One widget manufacturer I used to work for would try to upgrade their products annually, and as their previous products became less and less common the prices of maintaining those products would organically become less cost effective.  It's not due to greed, but manufacturing rates.  If I make 100 pieces of widget A, each piece is cheaper than if I only made 50, or 25.  As fewer people need Widget A, it'll become more expensive for the manufacturer keep in production, and more expensive for the customer to buy.  But, in order to stay relevant and keep attracting new customers, they need implement new technology in their products.  It can be a double edged sword; your new customers are happy to have the latest and greatest, and your old customers become bitter as their product becomes more expensive to maintain, or even useless.

I know it's trendy to bash on Ledger these days, especially in recent years, but consider what they have done to help the crypto community over all.  One could argue they've been a tremendous force in the effort to accelerate mass adoption due to the simplicity, affordability, and security of the Nano S.

Again, I'm not a fan of Ledger but at the same time I have a perspective on their struggle that may not be common on this forum.

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[NeuroticFish]

I know it's trendy to bash on Ledger these days, especially in recent years, but consider what they have done to help the crypto community over all.  One could argue they've been a tremendous force in the effort to accelerate mass adoption due to the simplicity, affordability, and security of the Nano S.

I could say that they didn't do anything spectacular and the competition has done the same.
But: they've done it cheaper than most of the competition. And clearly that means cost cutting here and there, which is bound to back fire sooner or later. And it did.
It's not about bashing Ledger because it's a trendy thing to do, it's about losing confidence/trust in them; and you know how difficult is to build up trust and how easy is to lose it.

[bitmover]

so I am predicting they will create some update that will make model S unusable in reality... maybe with much bigger ledger coin apps.
Excuse could be that they are doing this for ''safety and security'' of their beloved customers  

It's obvious that sooner or later that's what will happen. The point is the "when". I hope that it'll happen only after the chip shortage loosen up and SeedSigner becomes more mature too.

[/quote]

I think that if that happen, we can just ignore ledger live and use third party wallets such as Electrum/metamask/etc that will most likely never drop support.

our seed will never be unusable, and any firmware update that would "destroy" the device we can simply skip it.

I know it's trendy to bash on Ledger these days, especially in recent years, but consider what they have done to help the crypto community over all.  One could argue they've been a tremendous force in the effort to accelerate mass adoption due to the simplicity, affordability, and security of the Nano S.

I totally agree with this.

Cheap, easy to use, compatible with every altcoin/fork/etc.  And most important: very safe.

[dkbit98]

I know it's trendy to bash on Ledger these days, especially in recent years, but consider what they have done to help the crypto community over all.  One could argue they've been a tremendous force in the effort to accelerate mass adoption due to the simplicity, affordability, and security of the Nano S.

I am not saying something just because it's trendy, but I am doing exact opposite and just stating the facts.
I would argue that first ever hardware wallet Trezor has done much more than Ledger for whole Bitcoin ecosystem, and has much less problem with their devices.
Same Trezor model One still works perfectly fine and they have regular updates, and I don't know a single contribution Ledger made to Bitcoin ecosystem,
but yes they are contributing a lot for shitcoinery and NFT scammery.... so they basically accelerated shit, like when you flash water in your toilet.

[NeuroticFish]

I think that if that happen, we can just ignore ledger live and use third party wallets such as Electrum/metamask/etc that will most likely never drop support.

Although software like Electrum will most likely support older firmware, this will happen only until the point some big change/update/security fix is implemented (into bitcoin itself, or Electrum, or even Ledger itself).
While I expect Electrum be on the side of its users, it probably won't allow unsafe device still work.

So at some point, whether we like or not, after Ledger stops supporting Nano S, it will become just an useless piece of hardware.

However, we're still fine for 2 more years at least, so it's not something I'd insist on too much this early.

[DireWolfM14]

I would argue that first ever hardware wallet Trezor has done much more than Ledger for whole Bitcoin ecosystem, and has much less problem with their devices.

Certainly that argument can be made, and I am inclined to agree with you.  I was merely commenting on shear numbers, Ledger having a bigger market share may have made a bigger impact on attracting end users, and hence mass adoption. 

Same Trezor model One still works perfectly fine and they have regular updates, and I don't know a single contribution Ledger made to Bitcoin ecosystem,

Couldn't agree more, Trezor is a superior product, and company.  Although the ColdCard is starting to win me over, I can't see myself without a Trezor any time soon.

but yes they are contributing a lot for shitcoinery and NFT scammery.... so they basically accelerated shit, like when you flash water in your toilet.

Haha!  Touché.  Shitcoiners will grow up eventually, and they still need some love in the mean time. 

[n0nce]

Exactly what dkbit98 had repeatedly warned about happened. What will be the next stage? Is it really the termination of support Nano S. Then millions of user devices will turn out to be a useless toy and people will be forced to buy a new HW device again?

To their credit; the devices don't become useless the moment Ledger drops support. They continue working just fine.

It is true however, that you probably should start looking around for something new once that happens, because you'll never know if there are new security vulnerabilities that are simply not fixed anymore.

Now I'm going off topic a little a bit and ask a question. Why hasn't crypto community created their own hardware wallet yet? It seems to me that this can be done with due desire, although many difficulties and obstacles will arise.

The idea is the following:
Hardware and software must be separate. The firmware must be open source with the ability to download, as is done with electrun, for example, and the device itself so that it can be bought separately or assembled by yourself. Even better, if the device will have a high level of maintainability and be modular.

As a result, it could look like this:
- bought the device or assembled it youself from the components.
- downloaded the firmware and installed it on the hardware wallet.
- use it.

That's exactly the idea behind SeedSigner. It doesn't have a secure element, so they opted not to allow for seed storage on the device; this means it's less easy to use than an actual hardware wallet that does store the seed.

However, the closest I know that you can get to that idea is:
[1] Buy Foundation Passport (by the way; price will increase from $200 to $250 next week)
[2] Open it up, verify the integrity of all components, as well as the screen circuitry etched into the glass and match what you see against the fully open-source hardware data sheets, PCBs, etc.
[3] Upload your own 'developer pub key' to it
[4] Clone the firmware repo and read all the code, perform static and dynamic security audit
[5] Build the firmware and upload it to the device

Same Trezor model One still works perfectly fine and they have regular updates, and I don't know a single contribution Ledger made to Bitcoin ecosystem, but yes they are contributing a lot for shitcoinery and NFT scammery.... so they basically accelerated shit, like when you flash water in your toilet.

Actually, Trezor's impact is super big, just considering their actual open source license (and apparently good code).
It is used by ColdCard (though it switched to CC license which doesn't allow to use their code, which I'm not sure is even allowed by the Trezor license).
And it is used by Foundation Passport; who don't hide it at all:

trezor-firmware Contains a copy of the Trezor source code in order to use Trezor's crypto library. We will likely make this into a git submodule soon to make it even easier to keep the library up to date.

Sure, Ledger gave a cheap device to the masses, but nobody could use their code or information on how to build the hardware for such a device, since it's all totally closed and I don't think it was cheaper than a Trezor One either. It came after the Trezor, too, as you mentioned, so there's that.

Ledger having a bigger market share may have made a bigger impact on attracting end users, and hence mass adoption.

They've used questionable tactics (shown in music videos with tens of millions of views) for that, of course all paid from customers buying old, low-quality (and still cheap) devices; so the margins must be pretty large and the component costs close to zero.

Couldn't agree more, Trezor is a superior product, and company.  Although the ColdCard is starting to win me over, I can't see myself without a Trezor any time soon.

Keep in mind to check out the 'questionable' stuff about CC I wrote above and in the ColdCard thread. Also looking at its price vs. current (discounted Passport price) of just $40 more, I find ColdCard a hard sell right now.

[dkbit98]

Certainly that argument can be made, and I am inclined to agree with you.  I was merely commenting on shear numbers, Ledger having a bigger market share may have made a bigger impact on attracting end users, and hence mass adoption.  

Yes I agree with you on this, ledger invested a lot of money on marketing and they collected millions from various companies.
This is what makes me be even more suspicious about ledger, because I don't know who exactly sent them money and for what.
I do know they are receive all customer/user stats as third party, like ledger revealed recently in their ledger live privacy policy.

Couldn't agree more, Trezor is a superior product, and company.  Although the ColdCard is starting to win me over, I can't see myself without a Trezor any time soon.

I wouldn't say it's superior, and it certainly needs some updating, but it's better than Ledger and everything is open source, just like Bitcoin.

To their credit; the devices don't become useless the moment Ledger drops support. They continue working just fine.

Sure, but question is can you really use all their previously discontinued devices and how...
You need to go with some shenanigans and use other ancient outdated software wallets just to make a transaction or send coins.
I could say the same thing for old Coldcard hardware wallets, I can probably use them but they are not safe and can be exploited.
I can also use win98, winXP or win vista, it works

[dkbit98]

There is one more reason not to buy any of the ledger hardware wallets (including Nano S) for storing shitcoins, in light with recent collapse/hack of Solana.
People keep tweeting this would not happen if you had coins stored on hardware wallets like ledger, but ledger conveniently decided to stop ALL Solana services so you can't move coins even if you want to do it.

Solana account is Disconnected on Ledger Live and showing 504 error.
Ledger customer support officially confirmed that due to the extreme circumstances surrounding the widespread hack on the Solana network, their Solana explorer is experiencing outages and it's not up-to-date.
https://www.reddit.com/r/ledgerwallet/comments/wf7x9x/solana_account_disconnected_on_ledger/


https://status.ledger.com/
https://web.archive.org/web/20220803204305/https://status.ledger.com/

If you look at history of their Ledger Live app you could mostly see news about new tokens, like 100 cardano tokens added, etc.
You are better of storing bunch of bananas in secure vault, than using any hardware wallets to store shitcoins.

[Pmalek]

<Snip>

I have no information about the hack and what happened with Solana, but the issues with this particular network is certainly not something that Ledger or any other HW manufacturer is to be blamed for. While updating one of my threads about withdrawal fees/amounts on crypto casinos, I noticed that withdrawals for Solana was disabled on a popular casino the other day. If I made some more checks, I am sure I would find other casinos that have done the same thing.

[DireWolfM14]

If I may switch gears for a bit; any body hear about Ledger seeking more funding?  According to a couple of articles that came out yesterday, they're in talks with investment firms looking for $100 million.  Not sure if this is a sign that they're in trouble or that they're planning on some other gimmick to lure more newbies.

Article here.

[dkbit98]

I have no information about the hack and what happened with Solana, but the issues with this particular network is certainly not something that Ledger or any other HW manufacturer is to be blamed for. While updating one of my threads about withdrawal fees/amounts on crypto casinos, I noticed that withdrawals for Solana was disabled on a popular casino the other day. If I made some more checks, I am sure I would find other casinos that have done the same thing.

I don't know what you mean, but ledger is even worse than casinos.
They received money from shitcoins like solana to list them, they supported them and spent time to support them them and add in their wallets.
People transferred and exchanged coins in Ledger and now they can't use or move them from ledger.

This looks like a clear promotion to me:

A World-Leading Blockchain Within Your Reach

https://www.ledger.com/blog-you-can-now-buy-manage-solana-sol-through-ledger-live

STAKING SOLANA THROUGH LEDGER

https://www.ledger.com/staking/ledger-node/solana

Stacking Towards the Sun

https://blog.ledger.com/stacking-towards-the-sun/

If you are going to be world largest shitcoin casino wallet than you should accept some responsibility for shit you are promoting.

If I may switch gears for a bit; any body hear about Ledger seeking more funding?  According to a couple of articles that came out yesterday, they're in talks with investment firms looking for $100 million.  Not sure if this is a sign that they're in trouble or that they're planning on some other gimmick to lure more newbies.

They spend a lot of money on advertisement and bear market probably affected them like other crypto companies, but they need more money to promote other shitcoins.
Look carefully who is going to give them money, if they ever release this information publicly.

[SFR10]

but ledger conveniently decided to stop ALL Solana services so you can't move coins even if you want to do it.

People transferred and exchanged coins in Ledger and now they can't use or move them from ledger.

I'm not trying to defend Ledger by any means ^{[they've turned into a shitty company in the past couple of years]}, but it appears that there's still a way to access and move their Solana funds...
^{- SET UP AND USE SOLFLARE TO ACCESS YOUR LEDGER SOLANA (SOL) ACCOUNT}

their Solana explorer is experiencing outages and it's not up-to-date.
~Snipped~
https://status.ledger.com/

Looks like it's not the only network with outages in the past few days, but the other affected networks were just on smaller scales.

[Pmalek]

This looks like a clear promotion to me:

It's PR like any other PR in the world. I am not sure what you expect it to say. According to you, should it say Solana is a shitcoin only used by idiots and morons? if you stake Solana in our buggy Ledger Live app, you are a retard. Don't buy SOL, its absolute rubbish. Maybe you can show my some PR from other hardware wallet manufacturer's where they talk bad about their product, services, and the coins they support.

And the problems with the SOL explorer have been solved on 3 August btw.
https://status.ledger.com/incidents/zk0tmdvpbp7j

[dkbit98]

I am not sure what you expect it to say. According to you, should it say Solana is a shitcoin only used by idiots and morons? if you stake Solana in our buggy Ledger Live app, you are a retard. Don't buy SOL, its absolute rubbish.

They already did a ''perfect'' job promoting shit, with titles like World-Leading Blockchain Within Your Reach and Stacking Towards the Sun.
Ledger is responsible for making shitcoins more popular and giving people false sense of security, but personally I am not expecting anything from them.
Hey, if you like using shitcoins on your ledger device, than enjoy while it lasts.

Looks like it's not the only network with outages in the past few days, but the other affected networks were just on smaller scales.

That's what you get when you list so much shitcoins.
I am not sure about status of other networks, but it makes device less secure with more coins listed, like few days ago I saw they listed 100 cardano tokens, but they still ship devices with dust under the screen  

[Pmalek]

Ledger is responsible for making shitcoins more popular and giving people false sense of security, but personally I am not expecting anything from them.
Hey, if you like using shitcoins on your ledger device, than enjoy while it lasts.

People shouldn't rely on what Ledger says, or what you say, or what I say. They should do their own research before they invest in anything. Including Bitcoin. For everything else, they have only themselves to blame. Not me, not you, and not Ledger for having a blog that is filled with promotional content. I couldn't care what is on their blog. I don't read it or consider it before investing into anything. Any company that has a blog has certainly done their part in promoting something. That goes for Trezor and their blog as well.

As for me and shitcoins. Not that it is anyone's concern but my portfolio is made up almost entirely out of bitcoin. I guess their promotional materials aren't as good as you initially thought. I said almost because I store a few alts that I need for other purposes and ventures. But they don't fall into the shitcoin category.

[NotATether]

As for me and shitcoins. Not that it is anyone's concern but my portfolio is made up almost entirely out of bitcoin.

Most people here can say the same. It sounds ridiculous buying a hardware wallet for some semi-centralized coin, when the coin's network can just shut down and rendering your cold storage useless.

It all comes down to greed for a few extra bucks. People think staking === make more money. Maybe that is the purpose for the invention of staking, but it stinks, and it shows its rotten side in situations like this.

[Pmalek]

I wasn't sure where to post this because it doesn't require its own thread. But I think it fits quite well in here. Plus it will make dkbit98 happy when someone brings up a negative thing about Ledger.

I was sending some USDT last night and noticed something I never saw before. While creating the transaction and verifying the data on Ledger's screen, I got a call on my mobile and had to postpone the signing process for a few minutes. When I was done and I wanted to confirm and broadcast my transaction, it failed with an error message saying that I need to verify the data on screen within a 30-seconds period. On a second attempt, it worked just fine.

This is a really bad feature Ledger has created here. I don't think it's something that Tron developed from their side. Instead of incentivizing users to take their time and double and triple check the addresses and amounts, Ledger is forcing them to hurry up and possibly making a mistake due to a small 30-seconds window for the verification. 30 seconds is enough in all honesty, but some people are slower than others for different reasons.

Is this feature present with other coins and networks?

[SFR10]

Plus it will make dkbit98 happy when someone brings up a negative thing about Ledger.

This line just made my day

This is a really bad feature Ledger has created here. I don't think it's something that Tron developed from their side.

I dug hard, but couldn't find any other reported cases... Did it occur while using the LL or it was connected to a third-party wallet like Tronscan?
It seems the memory issue that dkbit98 mentioned last year, it's starting ^[somewhat] to protrude from the surface ^[source] while it hasn't even been a month since they've sold the remaining stock!

[Pmalek]

I dug hard, but couldn't find any other reported cases... Did it occur while using the LL or it was connected to a third-party wallet like Tronscan?

It occurred while using Ledger Live and the native Tron app - not a 3rd-party wallet. I haven't done any additional research if other people noticed something similar in the past. The next time I make a Bitcoin transaction, I am not going to sign and broadcast it for a few minutes once the information gets sent over to my Ledger just to see if the same feature is also present with Bitcoin.

It seems the memory issue that dkbit98 mentioned last year, it's starting ^[somewhat] to protrude from the surface ^[source] while it hasn't even been a month since they've sold the remaining stock!

The limited storage capacity is a problem, no doubt about that. However, it would be illogical to think that the apps aren't going to get bigger with time, and once they do, the internal memory will become an even bigger problem. When Ledger started supporting Taproot, new code had to be added to the BTC app and that resulted in a bigger size. As soon as some new changes are introduced, we will see another increase in the app size.

Ledger's fault is producing a hardware wallet with such limited memory. But I can't blame them for the size increases of individual apps. It would be like blaming Bitcoin Core for each new block that gets added to the blockchain and the resulting decrease of your own disk capacity.