Welcome back to The Breakdown with me, NLW.

It's a daily podcast on macro, Bitcoin, and the big picture power shifts remaking our world.

What's going on, guys? It is Wednesday, May 17th, and today we're discussing ledger, ledger, ledger, ledger, ledger.

Before we get into that, a quick note. The breakdown is, of course, now the breakdown network,

and one of the shows that we have launched is Bitcoin Builders. It's a show all about the creative and entrepreneurial energy swirling around Bitcoin,

and I am excited to share a new episode today with Corey Clipsden from Swan. We go a little deeper

into the Swan story and how Corey decided to build and what he decided to build. So if you

are interested in that, check out the Bitcoin Builders podcast and then come join the discussion

on the Breakers Discord. You can, as always,

find a link in the show notes or go to bit.ly slash breakdown pod. As for today, for the last 24 hours,

all anyone has been talking about is Ledger. It's a story that hits from so many angles. It's a story of technical challenges and tradeoffs in

crypto-U-X. It's a story of, let's call them challenges of corporate communications and marketing,

and it's a story about the fundamental principles of self-sovereignty that underlie the industry.

So let's try to parse through it, shall we? On Tuesday, Ledger announced a social recovery feature called Ledger Recovery for their popular

line of hardware wallets.

Now, this feature sent crypto-Twitter into a frenzy, as we will see.

Security experts warned that this feature was unsafe in its fundamental design, and potentially

revealed previously unknown security design flaws for all ledger users.

So first, let's do a quick definitional explanation of what social recovery actually means.

Social recovery is a design feature that's common in lots of crypto storage setups.

It's offered by a range of companies

in the industry. Now, there are a multitude of different security designs for this feature.

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