Do you really manage your crypto entirely by yourself on a ledger now?

Today, Ledger made the news with the announcement of a new firmware update for their software. This update will enable users to subscribe to a recovery service through Ledger. By taking out such a subscription, you pay a monthly fee and it becomes possible to recover your wallet using identity documents after losing your key.

Exciting update, Ledger has a new product, Ledger Recover, that’s launching soon: https://t.co/nT1VHnnSYz
🧵 Here’s what Ledger Recover is and what it isn’t, explained by @P3b7_ & in the thread below. pic.twitter.com/RW1w07H6pK
— Ledger (@Ledger) May 16, 2023

Negative reactions from the community
In the “not your keys, not your coins” community, the firmware update is poorly received. The company had promised that it would never gain access to the issued wallet keys, and that even firmware updates could not change that. Do you really have control over your crypto now that Ledger apparently has a way to obtain access to the wallet? And what if Ledger is forced to comply with (unfair?) sanctions and has to freeze customers’ funds? It now strongly seems that a third party must also be trusted with Ledger, which goes against the Bitcoin philosophy for many people.

Here’s an explanation of what we all understood (until recently) was Ledger’s security model and value proposition. https://t.co/zxNAU0caJA
— David “JoelKatz” Schwartz (@JoelKatz) May 17, 2023

Check out my new #ledger Nano X tutorial! pic.twitter.com/bxSN4tqtXP
— OKLAHODL (@oklahodl1) May 16, 2023

Competitor Trezor also responded with a few tweets indirectly referencing Ledger’s announcement, claiming to be fully open source.

Not👏Your👏Keys👏Not👏Your👏Coins
— Trezor (@Trezor) May 16, 2023