Making Secure Tech Accessible with Ian Rogers, Tony Fadell and Charlie Perreau

Well, if we're talking about security, the security of both Ledger Flex and Ledger Stacks follows the same model that Ledger has been pioneering for 10 years. What makes Ledger unique is that it is an open development environment on top of smart card technology. Smart cards are chips developed here in France, and we all have them in our pockets in credit cards and passports. The magic is that Ledger devices are powered by the same chip in your credit card. The touchscreen on a Ledger Stacks or Flex is powered by that chip, which is meant for security, not performance. In the world of digital assets, your private key is what proves ownership of the value on the blockchain. For security, you need three things: the key must be generated and stored in a secure element, the private key must stay there when computation happens, and you need to be able to verify with your own eyes what you are signing. That's the challenge when developing a Ledger device, and Ledger is the only product on the market that does all three. Other hardware wallets may use a secure chip for storage, but they definitely don't have a secure screen. The hard part is achieving all three. Tony brought the idea that if we want to get to tens of millions or hundreds of millions of users, you need a user interface that is usable on the device and goes all the way through to the software.

Yeah, I mean smart cards are nothing new, but exactly zero of them are upgradeable or can load arbitrary apps. For Pascal and I, what motivated me to come to the company is the mission of freedom technology. The secure element in your credit card protects the bank's secrets, the one in your passport protects the government's secrets, but Ledger protects your secrets. Having property rights, proof of identity, proof of humanity are increasing in importance. Absolutely, and the other thing is the screen and touchscreen. Almost no other devices have that kind of technology. We took it to another level because we believe this device and the technology inside it and the services around it will be used for much more robust transactions. It's not just designing for the past; we designed something for the future and made it future proof. We have NFC and other technologies built in. You can think of it this way: you buy an Android device and in a year or two you have to buy another because the software is not upgradeable. But with a PlayStation, you use it for 5 to 10 years and developers keep building on top of it. That's how we think about these devices: as a platform for a whole set of robust services, so you can use the same device for many years to come.