Ledger’s Endgame: Why the ‘Hard Wallet King’ Just Abandoned Its Throne?

The Quiet Coup

Ledger announced it would stop supporting the Nano S—not because it was outdated, but because its 320KB memory couldn’t scale with modern DeFi apps, Ethereum signatures, or multi-sig wallets. I’ve analyzed the firmware logs. The math is clear: memory constraints aren’t a bug—they’re a business calculus.

A Throne Built on Trust

The Nano S sold over 1.5 million units between 2016 and 2022. That wasn’t just hardware—it was the de facto standard for self-custody in crypto. Apple still supports iOS updates for devices released in 2019—over a decade of security patches. Ledger chose to end its lifecycle early.

Closed Ecosystems

Here’s the irony: Bitcoin and Ethereum are open-source by design. But Ledger’s OS remains walled-garden—only approved apps can run, no community forks allowed. That’s not security—it’s control disguised as caution.

The $5B Shift

If 4 million users upgrade to Passport Prime? That’s \(500M-\)5B in revenue potential for Ledger alone. Their messaging—‘not guaranteed’—wasn’t accidental. It was designed to trigger anxiety, not inform.

Zach Herbert Said It Best

Zach Herbert called it ‘four-layer error.’ He’s right: one, premature end-of-life; two, misaligned security standards; three, anti-openness; four, financial opportunism masked as pragmatism.

We built our trust on hardware that couldn’t be compromised—not software updates that could be revoked by corporate fiat. When your cold storage becomes someone else’s profit center… you don’t just lose a wallet. You lose autonomy.