Valued at over $1 billion and with an estimated annual revenue of over $53 million, Ledger is one of the world’s most well-known and popular providers of hardware wallets. In May 2023, the company experienced a significant backlash around its Ledger Recover feature — a key recovery service that provides a backup of your seedphrase and allows you to restore your private keys.

Many in the Web3 community claimed that the firmware update that enables the service to exist goes against Ledger’s longstanding policy that guarantees a user’s private key will never leave the device. As a result, Ledger postponed the launch, with CEO Pascal Gauthier apologizing for the “unintentional communication mistake.” Ian Rogers, Ledger’s Chief Experience Officer, was on the frontlines of responding to this controversy and addressing user concerns.

In this episode, we cover lessons learned from the Ledger Recover backlash, the challenges of communicating in Web3, the ERC-4337 standard, and more.