This exciting announcement, which comes amid a crypto market downturn, was released by Ledger’s social media team on Thursday morning, and subsequently relayed to the devices of tens of thousands of devoted Twitter followers.
Monero (XMR) Now Compatible With Ledger Nano S
After months of anticipation, Monero (XMR), best known as this nascent market’s foremost privacy cryptocurrency, has been added to the Ledger Nano S, the brainchild and flagship product of French crypto upstart Ledger.
In an official release, which came alongside the impassioned tweet, the world-renowned startup, a self-proclaimed “global leader in security and infrastructure solutions for cryptocurrencies”, exclaimed that it had announced that starting Thursday, its Nano S would be compatible with the 0.13 installment/version of Monero’s graphical user interface (GUI).
We are thrilled to welcome another top crypto asset to the Ledger platform with @monero. The Ledger Nano S is now compatible with the latest version of the Monero GUI wallet.
Start securing your Monero with a Ledger Nano S!
– Ledger (@LedgerHQ) November 29, 2018
So, now, security-conscious crypto “HODLers” will be able to use Ledger’s in-house application to safely store XMR in cold storage, instead of the bootloaded applications that aren’t GUI-friendly. Like Ledger’s other natively supported assets, the Nano S will securely store private keys “using a state-of-the-art secure element”, while also facilitating an easy-to-use environment for the consumer.
Expressing his excitement for the addition and development, Eric Larcheveque, CEO of Ledger, wrote:
We are thrilled to welcome another top-ten cryptocurrency to the Ledger platform with Monero. With this addition, Ledger devices now cover 90% of the entire crypto market capitalization. We will continue to support more crypto assets in the future, both through our own developments and with CryptoTuesday, our monthly release of apps developed by our incredible community.
Monero Bulletproofs Still Chuggin’
Monero’s addition on Ledger comes hot on the heels of the activation of the privacy-centric network’s ‘bulletproof(s)’ protocol, which was lauded as a game-changer by crypto industry participants.
Monero (XMR) “Bulletproof” Blockchain Upgrade To Go Live, Investors Bullish
For those who aren’t in the loop, bulletproofs, a specific form of range proofs, allow Monero to reduce average transaction sizes by “approximately 80%” from 13.2 kB to 2.5 kB. Due to the nature of the blockchain’s PoW system, smaller transactions can be directly associated with a lower amount of fees incurred. Due to the protocol’s activation, XMR transaction fees fell by 97% to near-negligible levels.
In the same upgrade, the Monero development team maintained that their network of choice would keep its ASIC resistant properties, before adding that they favor GPU miners, which promote decentralization and community participation.
Still, some have argued that while Monero has made valiant strides in the right direction, ZCash, its primary competitor (if cryptos have competitors that is), has put up a tough fight with the open-source project.
Just recently, as reported by Ethereum World News, ZEC, the native asset of the privately-owned ZCash ecosystem, was added onto Coinbase as the exchange’s first-ever privacy cryptocurrency. In other positive news for the privacy competitor, ZCash’s Sapling upgrade went live just days after Bulletproof, which aims to make privacy transactions default by making its underlying protocol lighter and less energy/resource-hungry.