"Web3 Project of the Year: Ledger

If there's one company that sums up the ecosystem far more than the exchange platforms, it's Ledger.

"Our customers are individuals who place paramount importance on the sovereignty they exercise over their data," says its boss Pascal Gauthier. "Being in crypto means using your private keys, keeping them, interacting in DeFi or NFTs. And for each of these operations, Ledger makes it possible to do so in complete security."

Bolstered by the collapse of FTX in November, the French heavyweight recently announced historic sales. So much so that the threshold of 6 million units sold has been passed for the Nano, the small devices that ensure the safekeeping of digital assets.

According to the company, 10-15% of people who ensure the safekeeping of their private keys themselves are equipped with Ledger hardware.

"There are probably more people who use our products than use protocols like Aave," murmurs Pascal Gauthier, "winning this award hardly surprises me because it represents the attachment and meaning that people give to our company.

The company's success extends far beyond France's borders, making Ledger one of the rare industrial success stories in a sector where the virtual reigns.

The company has been a unicorn since 2021, and its latest round of funding of $380 million bears witness to its growing influence. In fact, it is regularly cited by the French government to highlight the country's influence in new technologies.

The year 2023 will be under the sign of the Stax, its new top-of-the-range device due for release in the first half of the year. More elegant, more expensive (€279) and equipped with a screen to display its NFTs, this product represents a new attempt to appeal to a wider audience.

"We stopped pre-orders until this summer because we had so many and we need to be able to deliver them," explains Pascal Gauthier. "If you compare it to other launches we've been able to do, the Stax launch is three to ten times better, both in terms of the number of units sold and the turnover achieved," he continues.

The company (which has its own assembly plant in Vierzon) has in any case given itself every chance of succeeding with the Stax by acquiring the services of Tony Fadell, known for having designed the iPod.

The parallel with the American multinational often comes up in the mouth of Pascal Gauthier, who wants to reproduce with the wallet what Apple succeeded with the telephone. In plain English, a tool for storing all digital content that has value: cryptos, NFTs, tokenised assets, etc.

"Our vision is that the entire financial infrastructure will migrate to blockchain technologies," Ledger co-founder Éric Larchevêque told The Big Whale at the end of January. "Today, our main challenge is to make progress on the user experience while maintaining a maximum level of security. In this ten-year vision, the challenge is not to sell 2 million Nano or Stax, but to sell more than 100 million and equip the whole world."

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