PoolTogether Community Podcast #19 with Adrien and Zdeadex from Ledger

This is the PoolTogether Community Podcast. PoolTogether is the world's number one no-loss prize savings account. You can visit pooltogether.com to deposit. You're listening to the PoolTogether Community Podcast. This is your boy Hot Mike, aka Tim, aka I'm eating vegan for breakfast, Ma. And I'm here with Adrian and ZX from Ledger. Thanks for being here, my friends.

Thank you for the invite.

So my very first question, I think we could end the podcast right now if, if we, if, if you guys have an answer for this. How can we just not have scammers? Your thoughts?

Proof of humanity, I guess. Something like that. You know, try to Identify what's, uh, what's a bot and what's—

Just create like an account with your name, just changing like, uh, one letter and just like try to scam you. It's pretty hard. It's just like you have to verify. Like, it's like one of our slogans that just say like, don't trust, just verify it. It's, it's so easy like to get scammed in this universe. So I would say like, yes, the, the only thing you have to do is like verify everything. And if you doubt about it, Just verify again or ask anyone and just like, don't do mistakes like crazy stuff, just sending your mnemonics. I would say like, it's like the basic stuff, but the most common things we see.

When you have proof of humanity there, you could still be a scammer, right? You could still, like, you could prove you're human, you could prove you're an individual, but you can also be a bad human and a scammer.

Yeah, but I mean, you know, scams are often bots, right? I mean, I think by removing the bot issues, you remove most of the problem and, uh, And by, if you only leave humans dealing with humans, I think you have less scam. And then obviously the other design that has been proposed is, you know, put a little amount of money, right? So I've seen that on Twitter now that Elon is the boss. I've seen some Bitcoiners asking for, you know, just put a little bit of sats. So that if you end up being a scammer, then they, they take it from you, right? So you, you end up with a, a financial incentive not to spam, not to scam, just because you put money upfront. I think this is, the design can be just replicated with whatever value you need. You, you, you ask for value before you are able to post and, and, you know, a posteriori after your act, if we end up saying you are a scammer, then we just take the money from you, right? That's easy to do that. But obviously most of the platform, they are driving on, you know, everything being free. So when things are free, complaining about volume being high is like, dude, just don't make it free. You won't have scams, but you won't have anyone. But that's the, I would say the cost to pay or the price to pay.

Okay, so you're saying no scalable scamming. So you could still do scamming, but it would be on the one-off basis and it would be—

Exactly.

Not— Yes, there you go. There you go. But it's proof of, that's proof of stake, right? So you're putting your stake in, it makes it expensive, so you can't— Yeah.

You get punished a little

bit. A little slap on the wrist.

Exactly. That's a proof of stake design. Yeah.

So this is a, that's a weird way to start a podcast, but I was talking to the community and this is what we decided. We were like, we should make that the first question. And then the second question was, how can PoolTogether get on Ledger's list of apps? How can we make that happen?

Yeah, yeah, we need to make that happen. So the only, obviously what would be our preference is to have some kind of referral program so that, you know, when we drive traffic to your dApp, we could have something in return. Now, if I think at some point, if we can't, then just let's just accept it. And this is for us internally, you know, to get that stamp. But we, yeah, we should make that happen. It's not a lot of technical work. So obviously, you know, the goal of being on Ledger Live is to clear sign, right? I don't know if everyone is, Familiar with that concept now, but it's you know we are talking a lot about blind signing and clear signing, and the experience we want users to have when they interact with DAP is that they can clear sign on their nano, meaning that if you want to deposit in a pull-together pool, you would actually be signing on your nano that you are actually deposit, you know, an amount of token A with. pool ABC instead of just sending a hash, which today, if you are using a Nano, that would, that this is what would happen and we are not very happy about it. So this is, it's just a bit of code that needs to be written by someone, but you know, that's fairly easy. We are used to do it. We know people who do it. So yeah, the main issue is just getting this, whether some way to get a referral program or just an exception and we go, we go forward with this integration. This is definitely something, uh, Dedex and Rod in the audience can, uh, help me with that, uh, in the near future. But, you know, we, this is Ledger Live is, is meant to be the home for, uh, for dApps. And I think PoolTogether is so elegant, uh, in the design, you know, this, this lottery. but without losing is so, you know, this, this is why for me DeFi has been exist, right? It's, it's to put this elegant design that, you know, you can't really do in real life. It's too—

When you said—

Yeah.

I mean, you, you, you, you, you put fund, you make interest, and the, just, just the, uh, just the interest that has been, um, uh, made on, on the, on the, on the pool is being distributed among the, you know, Few happy few, but you know, every week different happy fews. And, uh, maybe one day, I mean, I, I never won, but, um, you know, sometimes it—

This is something that we don't have, like actually in the Discover part. Like we plan to add like a few games, like so people can just interact directly from a platform and just like play mini games on it. And yeah, the lottery is just like something very, very requested. I think like people just like love to. to put funds into something and when some, like, you kind of just like lose something from it, just like playing it, just like very fun actually and giving like a lot of interaction. I think like you have also like a lot of people that are playing it already. Do you have like any numbers?

Yeah, you're asking about PoolTogether. Let me give you my Hot Mike's PoolTogether spiel here. So, uh, PoolTogether is a prize savings account. Where you can put your stables into the pool and you can just chill and get prizes from it. So there's, there's a prize APY. You can actually see, you can simulate your odds and whatever deposit you have in the Discord. There's a Poolie bot. You could do that. I'm seeing right now, generally you're getting about 8% APY. That could change, but the whole point is you could win more. Daily, you can, you have chances to win way more than that yield. So that's the fun part about it. You put your stable somewhere where you're going to get yield that's better than most places, you know? And then the second thing is we have this new multi-delegation tool, so I can actually delegate my prizes to whomever I want and multiple people. And so what I like to do is I onboard people to crypto by delegating them my prizes. So that's like, they're getting USDC now on Polygon that they can go use to buy NFTs and go do stuff with. The other thing is like, you can add utility.

That didn't exist when I joined. Yeah. It was a long time ago, so it was, at the time it was fairly basic, but this is really nice. It's a very good incentive to, yeah, to do exactly what you said, you know, try to onboard this delegation part. I completely missed this feature. Nice one.

Yeah, and it's no loss. So Ledger could do it. So if Ledger had some stables, they wanted to put, let's say, a cool $5 million US into USDC on Polygon, every Ledger holder could get some of that prize yield. You can just delegate it across your Ledger. Like, I don't know if that, you know, but that's what I'm pitching to NFT projects. You can add a benefit at no loss to the project. You gotta put your stable somewhere. Why not benefit your NFT holders or whatever community members with that prize yield. And then you could just like have a running, again, a Discord. It'll just show all the prizes, all the winning that's happening. It's really cool. And you could just pull out at any time, take your USDC out at any time. So this is the new feature that we're trying to pitch. How'd I do? How's my pitch so far?

No, no, no, I mean, the pitch is great. And Rod, our head of dev relationship is in the audience. And you know, all this, everything you are talking about is We have people already thinking about this in the firm because at the moment, I'm sure you have noticed, you know, there is no Ledger token. There is no, there is nothing about owning a Ledger, right? There is no, we are trying to build communities around this because we believe our hardware wallet is, you know, it's worth more than just just being a hardware wallet, right? I mean, we, we like when people and the communities, they show a preference for security, right? Because, you know, owning a Ledger is, is, you know, kind of a very strong signal that, you know, you care a little bit about security and you're, you're just not satisfied with just a hot wallet running on a, on a, on a, on a phone that's probably being hacked already. So we are trying, and, and, and thank you for this idea, uh, but, but we are trying to, to engage, uh, in this, uh, you know, trying to see how we could, you know, um, make people, uh, happier and, and having more rewards than just owning the Nano, but, you know, feeling being part of, of your community. And I, I don't know if you noticed, but For the first time ever, Ledger issued a PoAP, right? So we had a PoAP for our Ledger Open Conference. It was December last year, but it was for devs, right? But I don't know if you noticed, we did a new Nano. It's called the S Plus. Well, just the S with bigger memory. But we, we did a Genesis Edition, and, and if you happen to buy, um, this, this edition, obviously it was limited. That's, that's the whole point. But you get a POAP, right? And as you all know, a POAP is an NFT, right? So now there we have, we are starting to build ways to, you know, communicate with our, um, with our, uh, customers, but in a different way. Right. Right? Not just the usual way, then just, we are, okay, we are a hardware manufacturer, you buy our stuff and that's it. Mostly the communication that you have after is support and, you know, releases. Every time we release a new Nano app and stuff, people are engaging and happy. But now, you know, we are starting to, uh, to, you know, test or try or you know, generate different ways to, to engage. So yeah, definitely, uh, the idea of, um, using our treasury, uh, to, to, you know, uh, help— I mean, not really help, but, uh, to have people, uh, in the community benefiting from that— definitely a great idea. I think Rod and I will take that away from On this, um, uh, from the first podcast, because really, I, I, yeah, when I, you know, I started using PoolTogether a couple of years ago and then I stopped because I, I had to, I had to accumulate for, uh, running, uh, uh, ETH validator, which is fairly expensive. But, um, uh, yeah, definitely. That's, that's a very neat feature. Good job, guys.

I mean, it sounds like it's just plug and play with that Po app for the Genesis. Like, let's, let's make that happen. I mean, we're about to seal the deal right here on the, on this call, but that's fine. We'll, we'll put it, we'll, we'll press P, we'll push pause on that. Um, but, uh, there's, uh, shoot, what were you just saying? You, what was the last thing you just said? I don't know. Uh, oh, we're just, uh, here you go, Adrian. No, uh, uh, the beautiful thing about PoolTogether is the community, as you know, 'cause you're part of the community. And that's, this is the thing I love about PoolTogether is when people say, when, oh, and yes, the Discord chat, thank you for being an ETH validator. We need more of these, please. When, when, when people say that they're not winning prizes, this is like for the culture now, but people just like delegate. So Adrian, we need to get you a delegation to get you some prize winnings. I'm sure we can make that happen after this call. But listen, I, so that's the, those are the 2 things we're going to push pause on. is the, uh, how can we get Ledger delegation for Ledger holders or POAP, Genesis POAP holders? That sounds awesome. And then also, uh, if you guys have not won, I would be happy to get— give both of you delegation out of my own kitty, my own little prize kitty, and make sure you get, get some, uh— and there's no bribes, you know, it's not bribes.

No, no, that's very nice of you, but let you know, I, I don't need that. But your idea of using the Genesis POAP is amazing, so let's, let's do that instead.

Snaps. Yes. Yes. I'll build.

Yeah.

Great.

You know, let's, let's see if we can, uh, uh, pile up on some more ideas. And I, to my knowledge, this is the, the only way that we have today to identify, uh, Ledger users. But I'm sure that, you know, it's just the first about, and, and there will, there will be many to come. So if we can build this, this engagement between, uh, put together community, and I'm sure you already, most of you already have Nanos, but Yeah. If we can make it so that, you know, having a Nano comes with some perks, like, you know, it's just communities thanking each other for, on one side, bringing security, on the other one, bringing this amazing design of no-loss lottery.

So I would love to hear both of your origin stories. How did you get involved in the crypto space and how did you get involved with Ledger?

I think, Dedex, you need to start on this one because yours is so much better than mine.

I love, I love it. Kind of easy, like, no, it's all right. Uh, okay, so, um, I joined Ledger like 5 years ago. Um, before that, um, I heard like about crypto. I think it was like in 2013 or '14. And, uh, I was just like a gamer or like playing video games, like kind of just League of Legends. And I just like won a tournament. And just like win my first money. And I was like, okay, so I need to save some money. And I knew like one of the— and he told me like, hey guy, uh, I know, I know about Bitcoin, blah, blah, blah. We, we have a company, it's called like ChronoCoin. We just deliver like USB key, uh, with some, some, some Bitcoin inside and, and that's it. I was like, okay, this is, this is good. I don't know about Bitcoin. So I, I just like discovered like the The first thing, and I just like buy some Dogecoin because I thought like it was like so fun to have like this little dog, like the the king of the internet. And after that, like I just like keeps like playing, and I did like have a chance to know this guy, and he just like say me three years later that just like you want to just do something for us? I was like, all right, man, I can. Can do everything. Yeah, I started like doing some shipping stuff, like just having the nano and ship them to overlap. And after that, like after one month, I just like started to do like the logistics and the customs things. So we built it like the whole thing. So now we are like shipping on almost 200 countries in the world. And when we started, it was the Bitcoin boom and we thought we were doing, I think, like $30K of MNO for the year. And actually it was the Bitcoin boom and we did almost 1 million devices. So it was kind of the real thing. Even inside the company, we didn't really see what's a bull run is. And literally everything like went crazy and we started like to grow like very fast. And so it's like very like an amazing experience. And after 4 years of that, um, just, I was like literally just spending all my off time, um, on trading cryptocurrencies, like trying to find like the next best project. And, and after that, yeah, uh, I found like some More technical stuff, like running Arivato, like on Cosmos ecosystem, and just like doing it like most of the time and dipping a bit like the technology more like on every project. And then I get the chance, like I meet Rod in Cosmos in Lisbon last year, and he told me like, hey man, why don't you just like come with me, like in the dev relationship. And that's it. I just like moving something like really more technical after 4 years. I was like doing like kind of like Literally not finished being written. I think like everyone can jump into it. Like you just have like to spend your hours, like your, your off time doing this. And if you're passionate about it, I think like anyone can just like jump into this ecosystem and you will see like you won't forget it. It's like literally worth it.

Yeah. Thank you, Zedex. So yeah, I don't know if you guys in the audience know, but All your nanos are shipped from a fairly small city here in France.

Vierzon.

Yeah, Vierzon. Even most of French people don't know Vierzon. This is really where the founders are. And yeah, I mean, if you get a chance, you can see. But yeah, it's quite, Every Nano from, you know, the whole world that, that ever been shipped is, is, is coming from there.

Um, because, uh, the products are made in France actually, and some people didn't realize that Ledger actually is a French company, and actually the devices are too. It's pretty cool. Yeah, nice mention.

Yeah, yeah, maybe it's, it's worth reminding that. Yeah, yeah. Everything is is is designed and manufactured in France. On my side, it's not it's not as as a great story. I'm I'm fairly new to to Ledger and cryptocurrency only for you know three maybe five years now. But before that, I was working in IT for investment banks. So I got to I got to experience firsthand how the system was working. And I found that, you know, there were some flaws in it. And that's what got me into crypto that, you know, the way you can, you can, yeah, fuck the banks got me really excited. Yeah, that's it. That's it for me.

And what are your roles now at Ledger?

So, uh, so Zdedek is working with, uh, developer relations, right? So he's, he's basically going conference to conference, living the life. That's what he, he's posting the nicest, uh, pictures on, on the internal Slack channels.

That's cool.

But I'm, um, on my side, I'm, I'm helping, actually I'm helping dApps getting into the Discover section. So, If you open Ledger Live into the Discover section, you have the Paraswap, the Oneinch, Lido, all these guys. I'm working very close to them to, well, help them get there. And once they get there, you know, make sure everything is working fine. My role is fairly, you know, partner relations. That's my title officially. But, and, you know, I would be very, Very happy, uh, pull together is, is, is the next one. That's for sure.

Okay. Yeah, go for it.

He's mostly doing everything in the integration part, like with a partner, like once in Ledger, he's doing like a lot of stuff and managing like a lot of partners. And actually, yeah, we, we literally need like him doing this job. Like I, I go to conference, like I meet people and So like a lot of people just don't know how it works and we give them like the documentation, we connect them like with Adrien, for example, and also like the other team from the integration team. Actually, it's called like the developer ecosystem team. And, uh, and yeah, it's nice to listen, like he's doing like an amazing job because it's just like being like, yeah, I'm just like doing something with, with some partner, but actually it's like a lot of stuff, uh, to manage and.

Yeah, because you, you might know our stack. We, you know, a big difference between Ledger and, and the other hardware wallets is that our stack is open, right? So we've designed, even on the Nano itself, right, that little USB key, you know, anyone can build on top of it. That's, you know, we are the only one to do that, right? And, and this is, this is why our You know, our work and the way we've shaped our team, the dev ecosystem team, is because our stack is open. So we need to be able to embrace everyone who wants to build a nano app, everyone who wants to have their coin in Ledger Live, right? They want to see the balance of their coin in Ledger Live. So we have a stack for that. We have, you know, documentation and devs who are working with teams who want to integrate, but We, we, you know, we are not— I mean, we are scalable as, as much as possible, but, you know, there is a limit in scalability. So we made everything open to have people build on top of us, right? And this is why we are working so hard to, you know, engage with the community, explain how they want to build, uh, explain what they can build, because there is Nano, there is Ledger Live, there So many parts. So that's what the whole team is doing. Explain, help people. And of course we are building like crazy because, you know, you always want to do more with your Nano. You always want to do more with Ledger Live. So we keep on building, shipping stuff. You know, this year we've shipped NFT. So now you have NFT gallery in your Ledger Live. You even clear sign. Transfer of NFT on Nano, which was not possible a couple of months back. So, you know, there is, I mean, our backlog on the engineering team is huge. It's huge. And we could, I think we could keep building for years. But, you know, the crypto ecosystem is, you know, having new ideas every 6 months. So we keep adapting. This is really our job.

Which is an interesting thing for a super safe and secure company, right? Like Ledger needs to exude safety and like the warm fuzzy feelings of like, if you buy this product, you will be okay, right? Like you want to feel very stable with Ledger.

Yeah.

How do you innovate? How do you keep those bags pumping, the lines going up, you know, but also be very safe and secure? And

I'll, but you see, this, this, yeah, but this is, this is the great design, right? Because the, the, the security, the stability, this is all in the core of the Nano, right? So this is the firmware. This firmware is, is, you know, it's the, it's our temple, right? This, this is our God. This is where if, if there is something wrong with it, we are, we are all doomed, right? So. This is why this piece is very stable, doesn't change so much. And what we have enabled and, you know, is people to build on top of it, but they cannot risk, you know, they cannot, I mean, the security you inherit from building on top of us, you cannot prevent the security, right? There is no way to do that. So that's why, Um, yeah, we, we like to, uh, I mean, there are some technical parts that are moving, but really the security is at heart and it's protected. Um, there is no way to attack it, uh, from, from anywhere. So yeah, we, this is, this is what I like really about, about Ledger and this technical design that, you know, it's open and, um, yeah. Yeah. Security, the security is there by design. You don't need to think about it. Now, what we are trying to do, as I was explaining, is, you know, clear signing. Clear signing is a bit of security, it's a bit of UX, it's a bit of just feeling better with the Nano in your hands when you can actually see what you are doing instead of just having a hash. So this is the big push at the moment, you know, getting everything in the clear so that people, you know, know which smart contract they're interacting with, which protocol these smart contracts are with. This is really the, you know, the, I mean, we've, everybody in the industry is working on that, right? The MetaMask, all the wallets that everything you can prevent from, you know, the web app not actually being the web app or the smart contract behind the web app not actually being the right smart contract, et cetera, et cetera. We need to try to guess, you know, what could go wrong. We are trying to list stuff, to whitelist. So we know for sure that, you know, that's the beauty of the blockchain, right? So if, you know, the Uniswap contract is the Uniswap contract, right? There is only one address. When you know the address and you know for sure you're interacting with an address, with this address, you know you're safe, right? So there is a bit of, you know, listing stuff, whitelisting, providing security because, you know, we know who we are dealing with. And there is also a bit of trying to guess what could possibly be wrong. Like, but this is, you know, this is something that's being worked on. It's not prod, it's not something I can demo. But, you know, trying to guess, like, you know, interacting with a smart contract that's 5 days old, you know, might be a bad idea, or maybe you need to, you know, double-check it before, uh, before anything happens. This type of trying to put more information in front of the user to make sure what they are doing is actually what they

want. Yeah, it, it, it's, it's pretty hard. Like there is like tons of new contracts, as you said, like we have to keep like the innovation going. Like to understand like what's the new protocol, what's the user trend, and be like always like, I think like on time to do like all these things. And this is why we have like an innovation lab that try to, to keep like on track like all the new protocols, all the new stuff, like all the new technology and try to find like, okay, this is it. We need this and we need to understand like deeply. The technology behind and try to find like, okay, as you say, like how it will interact with the contract. Is it like another thing? Like, oh, we like put it directly in the hub. Will it change something? We need to clear sign it. Is it like some new metadata on it? So it's pretty hard, but we have like a team that follow this and we try to be like, I guess, like everywhere, like on all social media. trying to find the new things just before it came because after, just like the users start to think this is a new trend, it goes very, very fast. Like in this industry, when it comes like to a new trend, you will be like, I don't know, like even like 100K of people just like rushing it. And after that, like everyone will ping you and say like, Hey guys, you're late. You need this. Or can I just like clarify on it? And as Adrian said, like a lot of people try, and this is why we are like a different team working on different subjects also. Everything.

Yeah. So I mean, you have, you said that like all of the ledgers are shipped out of, you know, France, out of the country. They're all made there. Business is headquartered there. I'm seeing like on Twitter. Twitter people saying, I got my Ledger off of Best Buy and I got scammed. WTF? Or, you know, there's, there's like, there's a lot of like tiptoeing, especially for me. I've been, I'm fairly new to crypto. I started in November of 2021, like really full-time crypto. And, and, and I get this stuff and I'm like, is this, I hear all these horror stories and of just like people getting rugged from like seed phrases and all of this. So I was going to have you help me through and like actually Walk me through setting up a Ledger, but one, that would be boring. And two, I actually needed to use it for our multisig for, um, Pool Together content team and stuff. So, so I've already done all that, but I'm still like, I'm still a little hesitant with like, okay, so what you're saying is if you buy a Ledger, it needs to be from Ledger. You shouldn't buy it from, there's not, Best Buy's not going to have a suite of Ledgers or like, like a sale do it. So, so for one, that I, I think of like, how are you going to scale that if you're only doing it from, from your place. You're the only one that I can go through to purchase it, right? Absolutely. And then the second thing is, even with that, I know, and Adrian, you just said you're from, you came from banking or you came from, you know, TradFi, you know that the biggest hacks, or at least I'm told from my quant hedge fund security people friends, like the biggest hacks are, the biggest scams are internal. Like that's the biggest problem for InfoSec is internal. So, And can you speak to that sort of general security orb, you know, cloud that I just put out there as far as like, I'm a new Ledger user, I'm new to crypto, I'm scared that I'm gonna get rugged left and right. How do I know if I buy a product that it's yours? And then how do I know that somebody in Ledger isn't gonna become like a nefarious actor?

Right, so when it comes to the reseller, we do have reseller, right? In the US, you can buy, you know, to Ledger, to Walmart, Best Buy, et cetera. So, but you know, buying a device, obviously when you connect it to Ledger Live, there is, we check for its integrity, right? And if, I mean, we check for, yeah, for the integrity and you can always reset it and generate a new seed phrase in case you have any doubt, right? So this is, This is the way you can, in case you have some doubt, but I mean, definitely you need to buy it, you know, with the package not being, you know, the package being fine, et cetera. When it comes to security, I mean, and you know, you refer to inside job, et cetera. I mean, I think here what the only argument really I can give you is look at the security team we have, right? So I don't know if you know the name, it's called the Donjon, which is dungeon in French. These guys, they spend their whole days trying to hack other hardware wallets. And, you know, most of the time they manage to do that. So if you go to their blog post, they will explain that they've hacked chips before. And obviously, all these guys are white hat, right? So they always disclose to the manufacturer how they did it. They take the steps, the necessary steps, so that people can fix the issue. Um, communicate properly to their communities. And, you know, this is really how we make sure that, you know, our devices are the best, is that we spend our days attacking other software, other hardware wallets. Then we spend our days trying to attack ours, obviously, because this is how you build a secure device, right? This is a device where even your best team, your best attack team cannot break it, right? And obviously on top of that, we have bounties, right? So in case you found any, there are different levels, you know, in what you can find, and there are different levels in the bounties, but you can be sure that if you find issues with the security in Ledger, you will be rewarded. we are ready to compensate you huge amounts because we know for sure that, you know, these securities issues won't be there, right? Because we have done our homework and we tried to attack our hardware wallets as much as we are attacking others, right? So this is really how in the security industry you build a reputation, right? You build a reputation by hiring the best engineers, um, participating in the, you know, all the big conferences. So, uh, you can see every year, um, Ledger is actually, you know, making talks, presenting research papers, you know, uh, how they are attacking chips to reveal secrets, right? These— this is leading expert in the industry, just not, you know, we are not, there is no magic, right? Nothing's magic. It's just hard work. It's work and, you know, being spent every day on making the attacks more sophisticated. So I had the chance, the opportunity to go visit their labs because even Ledger employees allowed to, to go where this team is, is working. Um, but you know, they, these guys work with lasers, um, with, um, you know, they are trying to, uh, fuck up the electric, electric system of the ship to make it, you know, reveal its secret, et cetera. So this is really, um, you know, uh, this is how you build a, a reputation and it's a reputation that has lasted for, for years now, right? There's, I mean, to my knowledge, we, you cannot hack a Nano. It's, has been the case for years. So this is really how you rely on, you know, reputation, the name Ledger is now out there for a long time. And by keeping your, being active in the community of all the security researchers who are both trying to attack us, but, you know, in a good sense, because, you know, these people are gentlemen most of the time. So when they attack you and they find an issue, they would tell you first before, so that you can take actions, right? So I think this is— And we actually made a few videos Let me try to find that on YouTube. Trying to explain—

Enter the Dungeon.

Yeah, Enter the Dungeon. This is a— we are trying to explain what this team— because most of the times you can't really imagine what this team is doing. I'll put the link in the chat. This is really our attempt to explain to everyone what security is on a day-to-day basis, right? What this is about. And you will see that it ends up being very, you know, it has nothing to do with the movies. And, you know, these people are normal people that, you know, they are here at the, At the office, at parties. It's just that the tools they are working with, the knowledge they have accumulated for years, is is is phenomenal.

Like enter the dungeon, which dungeon sounds way better in French. I guess that's the case with a lot of things. But you know, that's cool.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So so this is really yeah security. I mean. Security is complex. We're, this is our, our attempt to, to make it a bit simpler. Yeah. And, and to give you just, just to, I mean, by, by working at the firm, you know, I, I, I couldn't say that, you know, 6 months ago, but, you know, these, these are just normal people. You, you, you know, I, I was, you know, when, when, you know, you look at Bitcoin and, you know, the first one to, you know, the cyberpunk and stuff. I mean, these guys were and are still amazing, right? But, you know, when it comes to security, it's just, you know, brains, engineers.

Yeah, so I mean, this is the rub, which is onboarding normies to crypto. This is what PoolTogether wants to do. This is what everybody wants to do, because we want people to party with us. We want to see adoption. It helps, you know, pump people's bags, sure, but we really, I mean, I know in the BullTogether community really believes in decentralization, really believes in, you know, yeah, autonomy, like working together, building this stuff, get building the community. There's very much power in community, but these things are so difficult to, you know, I get people who want me to teach them about crypto for an hour and they handle like 5 minutes of it and they're like, okay, please stop. And maybe that's a critique on my delivery, sure. But it's difficult. And like you said, it's like, how do you make security accessible to normies? And we have a question here in the Discord chat about like, you have a non-crypto native like Scott Galloway, who's an investor. Like, how do you onboard even investors, right? You want to get normies to back the product. You also want normies to use the product, but generally crypto is inaccessible and especially Hardware wallets are inaccessible, and that's the point of it, right? You want to—it's cold storage or it's like secure, and you want to make it clumsy. How do you how do you navigate that with what you're trying to do and expand?

Do you want to take that one?

Is the next the easiest one? I think. But okay, it's pretty hard like to to to answer this. Like, we know like for example, like in some country, devices can just like be. unaffordable because like it'll be the same price. So imagine like you're living like in Rio and you wanna spend like $150, like getting a Nano. So it's literally not affordable for normal people who not use like Kivo or just like anything like that. So I think just, I think like there is like the hard part, like the things we say, like you're in MetaMask, you're creating your first 24 words and you're starting like just to buy like from Bitcoin or even like using a CEX like Binance or anything like that. So I think like when you just like start crypto and just like start to invest on it, it's not that crazy to just like use this stuff and just like start to get on board. But the point is, when you have like some funds to save, there is like the security need. And in this case, we are here for that. And we would really like to have a product like affordable to everyone. And this is why like there is like actually quite more affordable. But yeah, there is like maybe a product that could be like a non-security product. Yeah. things like really like low cost just for Telegram, just like private key securing, as like maybe like QMK is actually doing. But this is like not like what we are actually. So no, I would say like it's pretty hectic to get in and get the top of the security. And I think like this is the price, like, and you cannot just like change it. So

yeah,

I don't

know. I would, I would just add that it's, it's a big, um, I think it's also a shift in the way people think about money, right? So, or value, right? What, what you value is most of the time, and so far in the industry, actually you have used someone else to take care of what's valued for you, right? So if you own stock, If you own securities, if you own part of the fund, of a fund, I mean, whatever financial instrument you never own, right? It's never yours. Okay. You, there's a paper or something saying it's yours, but it's not, right? You don't have ownership. You can claim and hopefully the person in front of you is nice enough to let you have it back. But you know, it's not yours. And And this is the big shift. So if, you know, people are not ready for that shift, you know, there are custody solutions, right? It exists. It has its pros and cons, but it exists. You have the Coinbases, the Krakens of the world. You have other ways you can do custody. That's maybe it could be a first step. You know, you can get to understand the industry, you can get to interact with the protocol, with the dApps and everything. You can discover it. in a custodial way. That's, that would be the first step. And then if you really are deep into it, if you understand what's at stake, what's at stake, it's actually that, you know, you want people to own what the value they, they, the things they value, right? So if, if, and then, then comes the step where you actually start thinking about, okay, shit, now I have you know, money to protect and, and how do I protect it? Right. And what is the, what's the good way of protecting this, this money that I, that I just made? You can always rely on, on, um, on, uh, on someone else, but if you want to rely on you, that's empowering, right? That's really what crypto is about. You know, it's, it's to be able to empower people. so that you don't depend on a company or state. And well, when you do that step, you start thinking, you know, what are you ready to do? What are the threats that you are ready to, that you want to counter? What are the, you know, we always talk in these terms, what is your threat model? What are you scared about? So then you end up with, you know, very, reasonable, um, you know, uh, um, reasonable, uh, decisions such as, you know, don't carry too much on you, you know, just like when you have cash, you, you never carry, uh, too much cash. Well, in crypto it's the same. If your phone is stolen or, you know, uh, don't, you know, don't put too much. You put a little bit what you need for the day or the month or something, but don't put too much. And then for when there is a lot of value, then you put more complex scheme, right? You do multisig, you, uh, et cetera, et cetera. I mean, all these solutions are out there, they already exist. Um, and you know, these are good questions that humans start, uh, asking themselves, um, when it comes to, you know, things that you value and you care about. Well, you should own them really. That's, it's part of you.

Yeah, for sure. And I do think to add to what you could— what you have said is just this mobile app. I just, as I updated my Ledger Live on my desktop, I'm like, oh, there's a mobile app and I haven't used the Bluetooth feature yet. And so like Bluetooth, it just like, I downloaded the mobile app, I was able to connect right there. It validated that this is in fact a real live Ledger. It's not, some knockoff, even that was just way smoother than, you know, it just felt good. We interviewed Matthew from Argent, and Argent has 3 products. They have Argent Vault, they're doing like a ZK sync rollup, and they're also doing StarkNet. So they have an Argent X StarkNet, but they use guardians for their cert. They don't use a seed phrase for their wallet. They use like a private key that's split between Argent. You know this, I'm telling you, but for the listener who doesn't know.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You know, like they have a split private key that neither sees, but yet they can connect. It's like a zero-knowledge thing or something, whatever. But they have guardians. And then they suggest even past that, and this is, this is, I just saw a tweet from Wilson Cusack on this. It's just like the most secure or, or, or safest, or the, like the way to feel good about all of this is like having a multisig safe with multiple hardware wallets connected. And that was what, when I asked Matthew, how do I have the safest Argent product? You know, and he, and he said, use the vault and have your guardians be hardware wallets that you have, you know, like multiple hardware wallets. I was like, oh, okay, I think I could do that. And then I don't have to worry about like 15 different copies of my seed phrase that I send to random people that I won't tell you about or whatever. But it, yeah, so it's just like, how can we make things more accessible, more secure, easier to use, but also Not, uh, what did we say before? Uh, scalably scammable or something like that. That's like the—

Exactly.

The mantra. Like we just can't scale the scams. So anyway, I just, I, I encourage people to use that mobile app. It's killer. That was a really great experience. Um, so anyway, so, uh, hard. Here's a zinger from the chat is when are you going to sponsor Paris Saint-Germain? The football team, PSG.

Yeah, I don't think that's gonna happen.

Oh.

Sorry.

Are you— is there another team that you would do?

I, I've never seen soccer or football being a big, uh, uh, big thing at Ledger. So, you know, you never know, but I would be surprised personally.

What would it be? Skateboarding? What is it? What would you sponsor if Ledger could sponsor something?

Yeah, good, good question. Zdedex, what, what do you think we could sponsor?

Um, I would say like, uh, maybe cryptocurrency, but we won't do it because legal, legal stuff. So I think we will do nothing.

Yeah, I think in the, in the real world, uh, to, to sponsor teams and stuff.

Or like graffiti artists.

Or like, I'm just kind of lagging because we did sponsor stuff actually. We did sponsor like the football club of Viasel and the hockey club. Like one, like the— it's like World of Glass.

Like ice hockey?

Yeah, ice hockey.

Nice. Okay, I didn't know that. So you see, we supported ice hockey. Ah, okay, okay, okay. Not ice hockey.

Roller hockey, Viasel.

That's like very hipster of you. Like roller hockey is like probably making a comeback and you got, you You're gonna, what are you gonna sponsor next? Like a pinball team or something? It's just like, probably. That's what actually be really good. Ooh, I like that. I like that. Or like a Go squad or something. That's really good.

I think it was like 3 years ago or something like that.

Oh yeah.

Okay. So let me just go through the Discord and make sure we've got any other questions. Um, do we need to talk about anything that, that you guys wanted to mention or hope that we could address on that? We're coming close to our time, so I want to be respectful of your time, but just anything that you wanted to talk about or Or plug that Ledger. I mean, I would love to hear like what's the next for Ledger? Like what should we be excited about in the future for 2024?

Uh, to be honest, I'm, I, I don't know what I am allowed to say, so I have to, I have to shut up. But, uh, no, well, for sure, uh, uh, we, we are trying to, we are trying to, to, to, to innovate, right? And, um, the hardware wallet side of things. So this is, this is what we, part of the, the company is working hard, but, uh, You know, you will have to, you will have to wait for, uh, for the good news before, before I, I can even explain what we are working on.

Okay. But you said you're trying to innovate on the hardware wallet. That's, that's the, that's the alpha right there.

Yeah. Yeah.

But so I know almost like 500 people this year and stuff. Yeah.

Yeah.

If you are not like even like working on something, I, I, I don't know, like we, we're just like doing nothing in this case. So yeah, it's not an alpha, like obviously we are working, but we can't say like on what we're working on.

Yeah, no, but basically we, we remain a hardware wallet manufacturer and, and we want to manufacture the best hardware wallet. So we keep, we keep innovating on that front. And, uh, and obviously you, you've seen that Ledger Live mobile got a revamp, right? So we are trying to also improve the experience. Just like you described with the Bluetooth, you know, we are also working hard on making the experience better for users, right? And this is when your company's value is security and then there is no way we are going to give up on security. Every single friction that we can remove on UX is a big win, right? Because, you know, we can't compromise on security, right? So it has to come with the good and the bad thing. We can't do one-click everything à la MetaMask, right? Because, you know, That's just not how security works, right? If you care about security, you can't YOLO your billion worth of ETH, right? So yeah, we are trying to improve, you know, clear signing more stuff, proposing more dApps, more protocol, more smart contract platform. I mean, we keep on, Opening and trying to make it easier to build on top of us. And you know, these are technical challenges like, you know, I never had in my life before. It's not easy. It's not easy. It's hard. We are, as Dedek just say, we are recruiting hundreds of engineers to help us in this adventure. So it's, um, yeah, it's, uh, it's, it's a good time to, to be at Ledger if you want to, to help us build, uh, uh, what you want to see, you know, coming in the next months. But, you know, even in the next years, really, it's, it's, it's right now that we are, we are thinking, designing, you know, testing ideas. Um, that's, uh, There's a lot happening. Just note how many employees we have. I think we have 400 and we have maybe 500 open positions on our website. I mean, you know, we want to double. Just so that people don't say we avoid it, you know, there is a question about the data leak. How will you compensate the people? We will not compensate the people. You know, we fucked up. That, you know, this is the reality. We can, we are doing things better. We are improving. And, you know, we are doing everything we can so that it cannot be done again. Obviously, you know, This is how it works with security. Most of the time, you are trying to be before the hacker. Sometimes you're not. You just have to face the consequences. You know, we took a big hit in terms of reputation, even though it was only the client database, has nothing to do with the Nano. But, you know, it's a lesson. We learned from it. We are moving forward and, you know, you can imagine that we are even, you know, even more careful, but, you know, you are never careful enough. You can just keep on, you know, doing the right thing. That's what I would say. And yes, we are— I see 17 in the US as a comment. Yes, the team in the US is growing fast because Uh, you know, France is, is, you know, it can't be at the center of the world. So, um, our user base in the US, so it feels so right to have more employees, uh, to, to, to support our users. Um, yeah. Uh, some other questions?

Yeah. Well, well, just based on that, Adrien, like, Pull Together is known for like placing people into full-time crypto jobs. Like people from the community are just so, so baller, quote unquote baller, um, shot callers. They, they're just really quality people. That's the best thing about PoolTogether as a community. And so it's so cool to see placement. And so what is Ledger looking for like in employees? Like how, how do, how does one ace a Ledger interview when they're trying to work with you?

Um, well, it, it depends on, on the team. Uh, of course engineers is about knowing your code, but you know, I'm not an engineer. Sorry, I can't give you any advice. When it comes to our team, the team we are in with DDEX, which is the, you know, developer ecosystem team, which is a team with, you know, talking to, you know, other teams, right? What the skills we are looking for are people who are curious, who know enough from a technical perspective not to to be able to challenge, right? So, you know, to some extent we could challenge some design of dApps, protocols and stuff, but what, you know, we want people interested, genuinely interested in making the ecosystem grow, right? So this is what we are looking at. And it, you know, the reality is that competition is fierce, right? I can't, You can't, you know, every time we post a job offer, there are plenty, but, you know, it's definitely if you feel, if you first, if you found a job description that, you know, would fit and you are willing to work, you know, please reach out directly. You know, I'm happy to be a point of contact to give you more insight about what this team is doing because it's hard to get an exact picture from just a job desk, what exactly this is about. If it's close to me, I will be able to give you good insight. Some teams are very far from what we are doing. So I would see what I can do, but— Definitely try and, you know, this, the, we, you know, we need to hire, right? We need to hire. So please.

Yeah. So yeah, it's saying that you have 500 open positions and it's like very competitive. It's, that's fascinating to me. I was looking at the job. I always like to look at the, what you're hiring for or whoever I'm interviewing just to see like what's, available. And I did see you have 70 in the US and apparently you're trying to double, I would just assume you're trying to double that. So it's really interesting to see the positions you have available. I admire how you do, you list your positions online. It's very nice. The website's crisp. But how does it feel? This is my last question, but how does it feel being a luxury brand now? Gunna wearing a diamond-encrusted Ledger at the Met Gala this week. I mean, you've got like Gucci holders, like Ledger holders, like specifically using, like Ledger has become like this, this, uh, you know, lifestyle brand now. How are you going to lean into that? What, what, what can we expect next?

Yeah, I will just say that, you know, our, our chief, chief, uh, experience officer Ian is coming from LVMH, right? So Louis Vuitton and all this. So definitely there is You know, there is this touch, right? You can't, you, you, you cannot not see it. Uh, um, I, I have no idea what's coming, to be honest. Uh, but I don't know, Dedex, if you, if you can, uh, add on, onto this. But I mean, for me, you know, you have to, you, you have to, you have to balance between, you know, displaying wealth and, and also, uh, be careful. Right? So I don't want people to be, to stop being careful because of, you know, they have a Ledger, right? You should, you know, it's displaying wealth to some occasion, it's fine and safe, but, you know, I would, you know, let's keep that for some specific occasion. What I would say, ZTX, I leave the floor.

Uh, no, yeah, you, you, you said right. You, we don't wanna say like this is like a luxury brand and only in the part that maybe, uh, the devices is at this price and you are not gonna see maybe like promotion on it and maybe that's it. But yeah, actually you have to, to go like through, through generation. You have to understand like the, the culture of crypto. And actually, isn't it like this? Oh yeah, actually it's pretty hard to say like if it's like the right way or maybe it's just something that we want, like people very accessible to anyone. But anyway, in both case, the product is what it is. And I think like it's pretty fine in this way. Like some people just like use it as with like a lot of diamond on it and it's fine. Uh, it's like the pop culture and I think it's like pretty okay. The device is still at the same price anyway, so you can just get it like a normal one and it's, it's pretty, it's pretty okay. Like you will see like tons of things, um, doing like luxury stuff, but, but they are not like, it's, it's just like, uh, like, uh, I would say it's just something.

Yeah. I, I would add that you, you can recognize that the, the luxury industry is about scarcity. Right? So it's because some stuff are scarce that they are valued. It's not intrinsically, they don't have value because, you know, they are made out of gold or diamonds. Sometimes it's just because they're scarce or because it's a specific people who made it, right? And this is very real in the real world, in manufacturing bags, right? We are in France, we are This is where you can manufacture and sell bags for tens of thousands of euros, right? There is a very, I mean, the very same exists in the digital world, right? The very same. It's because things are scarce or, and it's because who made them? that creates the value, right? So with, with the NFT and the PFP and all that, I mean, this is, I mean, for me, this is just the same. It's, it's exactly the same, just the digital version of the, uh, real kind of, right? So when you, when you have that in mind, then for me, it's, you know, it's, it's, it's natural. It's, it's natural that What exists in, in what, or used to exist, what's keep existing in, in, in the, in the world will just extend digitally, right? So the behaviors that we see, the behaviors won't change, right? People like communities. They like to recognize, to, to be recognized and to recognize each other by what they own, right? So. You own a bag, you own an NFT. It's the same thing, right? And now it's provable on chain and I can recognize you and I can even set up a party in Paris where only people owning this NFT can get in, right? This is your new list, right? So for me, we are just extending this concept, which are, you know, very powerful, right? The belonging of a community and And owning a luxury object is a, is a, is a powerful idea. Um, and, and we are just making this digital now. So yeah, you can,

yeah,

you can feel that belonging or not, but, but it, it exists. It's out there. Yeah.

Yeah. So it's just interesting to see the brand, uh, balance that you have this luxury thing that's kind of like, it sounds like may, maybe is being leaned into just because of like the hiring and, and who you've acquired as far as from LVMH and stuff. But there's also this like making security accessible and you have like Ledger Learning on your website and there's, you know, the mobile app and it's not, so there is, yes, there's this exclusivity, which I think within crypto is like you got your bags pumped and you've got that Bored Ape and you've got that profile picture and you've got that status. But then there's that other side of like, hey, how do we make the world a better place? How do we, you know, and how do we keep things secure? So it's interesting to balance those 2 brands or those 2, I feel like they clash, but it'd be interesting to see how to make it work. But hey, Ledger, Adrian, and ZX, I really appreciate you guys being here and sharing stuff with us. I did hear some alpha in there. I was really excited to hear it. I pointed it out in the chat. Appreciate that. Would love to see how PoolTogether and Ledger can continue to work together with the dApp integration with Ledger Live. That'd be sweet. And then also with this multi-delegation PoAP genesis thing going on.

Yes.

And how we can continue. That sounds— we just— that idea happened on the podcast. We were all here for it. We were here for this day in history.

Exactly. Thank you so much for the idea. And let's, let's keep in touch to, to actually build the, the solution.

Thanks for listening to the PoolTogether Community Podcast. You can visit pooltogether.com to deposit, and we'd love to hear what you thought about today's episode. So visit the Pulled Together Discord and let us know.