Ledger’s Nano S End-of-Life: Did the Hard Wallet King Suicide Its Own Throne?

The Quiet Coup

Ledger’s announcement wasn’t a product update—it was a silent coup.

The Nano S, launched in 2016, wasn’t just a hardware wallet. It was the de facto standard of self-custody in crypto. Over 150K units shipped at €79—a modest price that anchored an entire generation of user trust. Now, after nearly a decade, they’re pulling support—not because it can’t run new apps—but because it can. The truth? Its 320KB memory is perfectly adequate for BTC and ETH transactions from 2016… but not for ENS domains, ZK-rollups, or multi-sig dapps.

The Closed Ecosystem Paradox

Here’s the irony: Bitcoin and Ethereum are open-source by design. Yet Ledger built walled gardens around its firmware—requiring official approval for any meaningful update. Community devs could patch security flaws themselves—until now. They didn’t open the door; they locked it—and called it “security”. This isn’t conservatism—it’s control masquerading as prudence.

The iPhone Comparison That Hurts

Apple supports iOS updates on devices over a decade. Ledger gives you two years—and calls it “end of life”? If your phone gets patches until 2030, why shouldn’t your wallet? The difference isn’t technical—it’s philosophical. Hardware wallets aren’t consumer gadgets—they’re trust infrastructure. You don’t retire infrastructure because memory ran out—you retire it when ethics do.

The Passport Prime Gambit

Zach Herbert of FOUNDATION didn’t just see an opportunity—he saw a vacuum. Ledger didn’t kill Nano S to make room for Passport Prime—they created one to justify its own obsolescence. The math is brutal: if even half those users upgrade? $500M+ in new revenue—immediately on the table. The game isn’t about security anymore—it’s about monetizing FOMO through planned obsolescence disguised as pragmatism.