Ledger Nano X - Sneak Preview

So I just got my hands on this. This is the pre-release version of the Ledger Nano X. And this is the new one. So the new one with the larger screen, with the Bluetooth, with the battery even. So I thought I might as well make a video to show you guys what it's like so you guys can make an informed decision about whether this is for you or not. Whether it's something you will want to use in your daily lives. So this is how to send crypto with the new Ledger Nano X. You scan the wallet you want to send. So let's shoot a quick donation to Andreas Antonopoulos, one of my personal favorites. And you enter the amount. So let's send in a lead number over here. And then you're pretty much good to go. Now this is the special part. You connect to the Ledger Nano X via Bluetooth. And here I'm going to show you how to just basically log in and to your Ledger just as normally it would. Well once you're in, select the Bitcoin app and then you're going to receive the message as if connected by cable. Make sure the address is connected and now you don't even have to scroll. Then just view it and click send and you're pretty much all set to go. And with the transaction send, you can just refresh and you'll see the transaction show up on the Blockchain Explorer. Done. So let's start off with my first impressions of the device. When I first had it in my hand, I was like, wow, this feels much more sturdy. So in terms of size, the new Ledger Nano X is larger than the Nano S. So you can actually just see the side by side comparison. I would say it's 20, 30% larger. And then for actually thicker, a little bit thicker as well. In terms of weight, it's actually double the weight. So I actually weighed the Ledger Nano S as 18 grams and the X is 36 grams. So it's almost double the weight. That's why it feels a lot sturdier in a hand. And it kind of makes sense because they have to shove a battery inside here and you can basically power and use it for what they say is six to seven hours. For me, I can't really test that right now because of the way that these pre-units have a different battery. So what I have here might not be reflective of what you actually get when you order it. For me, the biggest poll is the larger memory. So they got two megabytes of memory now instead of the older one, which was less than a meg. So what they say on the website is around 100 apps to test on it. If you want to install new apps like the Ethereum app on your Ledger, you can do it directly from your mobile phone. So just go to the manager panel and connect the devices via Bluetooth. And it's pretty much the same procedure. Just allow Ledger manager by double clicking and you have to wait for the next interface. So I will be honest, this part does take a little bit of time. So for me, it took around 15 seconds for these two devices to connect and pair up. But once you're paired up, you can be graded with the app interface and you can just download and install it. Once installed, you can add the accounts via the accounts add menu. So just basically go back, connect your phone again, and then you can now add and scan for existing Ethereum accounts and or add. So the current status of this app is that right now the developers for different coins, they need to do a slight upgrade to upgrade their app. So it's compatible with the Ledger Nano X and soon almost every coin that has development on the Ledger S will be supported on the X. If you guys want to check out which list of apps is available right now, I'm just going to scroll through on the side. So you guys can see what's compatible here. I guess that's the biggest power of the Ledger so far because they kind of adopted this model where they allow developers to develop the apps themselves. So instead of Ledger kind of integrating it with the coin, they let the development teams behind the coin make a version of the app. And then Ledger checks through that and deploys it onto the Nano. So that's kind of a different and that's why Ledger has more coin support than a lot of the other hardware wallets out there. It's because they pretty much open the platform to development. The other big question that a lot of people asked was with the Bluetooth. So Bluetooth, I've got a few interviews with the team here, but in terms of a quick summary of what this Bluetooth is and how it works on the device is that this Bluetooth is kind of set to always assume that it's being compromised. So the Bluetooth connects to the MCU and the MCU assumes that it's just receiving sending data and it doesn't allow control over the device. And even if there's a way to compromise both Bluetooth and the MCU, you still have to hit the secure element. So the secure element is its own separate compute unit and its own separate storage. And this is what makes the Ledger secure as well. This is because there's a huge wall basically not allowing any hackers to breach the device and have this extra layer of security. So in terms of other design notes, I felt that having buttons here is kind of cool. So instead of having buttons on the top like the Ledger Nano S, you have the buttons here to press. So hopefully this lasts a lot longer and well, it's pretty much more seamless. The other cool thing to know about this is that it uses USB Type-C, which is my current preferred interface now. I think there is a huge cable mess going on. So the normal ones they use are normal USB minis. And I found that after a year of usage, my one is starting to break a little bit. So just constantly connect and disconnect. And technically this Type-C is just a little bit more sturdy in that respect. So that's pretty cool that they use this. And I've also included a few of the interviews with the core team that I did at CES. So they're much better experts at answering questions related to Bluetooth and also related to the security of the device as well. Alright, so now some big questions about the new device, the Ledger Nano X. So the Nano Ledger X has a Bluetooth module. And I think a lot of people were initially quite shocked because obviously Bluetooth works over radio. So unlike a cable that connects directly from a PC to Ledger Nano S, now you're actually broadcasting a signal. So there's definitely a lot of concerns about security and we want to ask some questions about that. So first of all, right now the Ledger signs a message. Is it possible for like say your malicious neighbor who has radio signals nearby to kind of intercept the message coming from say a mobile phone, switch out the addresses that wants to be signed and then you know like hack your Ledger in such a way that well oops, you know, you accidentally send your crypto elsewhere. Very, very good questions. Thank you. First of all, what you need to what we need to say that about the confidentiality of the data coming on the Bluetooth. Everything which goes to the to the to the sink is kind of public because there is the transaction to sign and then the sign transaction. And the second, there is the state of the art. We use state of the art Bluetooth protocol. Some protocol of Bluetooth are pretty bad. We use the top level of security, Bluetooth security. And there is the first pairing between your device and the your, I mean your mobile phone and your Nano X. And during this pairing, there is a number which is generated the right from the public key of each device. And you can check if both numbers are the same. And when this this pairing is performed, there is an end to end encryption between the mobile phone and the device. Second, for the address swap or something like this, even if it was possible to perform something like this, at the end, ultimately, you check on your Nano X the address to which you will send your Bitcoin. And it's very important because even if your computer is compromised, even if your Bluetooth connection is compromised, ultimately, the only thing you can trust is the screen and your device. Because this is the actual data which will which will be signed at the end. The transaction which will be signed. Then we have the issue of Bluetooth actually not being secure as a module. So recently, there's been a few leaks where some devices, especially like smart fridges or that's a running joke, right? Smart fridges being taken over by hackers remotely. So this module, because it's very complicated, it's as radio has, you know, different components, it increases the attack vector for a ledger in the sense that someone can potentially, well, people fear that I can compromise entire device. What do you think about that? Yes, there is a very interesting paper about this, which is which are called screaming channels. This is side channel attacks using the Bluetooth radio. But in this very article, they use a chip which implements the cryptography and the Bluetooth on the very same chip. Right. And this is not the case in the in the Nano X architecture. The Bluetooth is implemented by MCU and the security element is implemented, implements the cryptography. So this is two different chip, completely different chip. And the communication between your Android phone or iOS phone to the MCU is one thing. And when the MCU gets this data, it acts as a proxy and sends it to the secure element. And the computation of the secure element is completely apart from the computation of the MCU which shows the Bluetooth. So in terms of like kind of modules, they're separate hardware modules. So the Bluetooth is one module. And even if this is compromised, even if there's like, you know, a year down the road, you find a security flaw in this Bluetooth protocol, which is not made by you guys. If there's a flaw there and they take over the Bluetooth module, they can't, can they still take, they can't take over the MCU? Or is that, is that possible? Like from the Bluetooth to take over the MCU? Is that a possibility? I don't know any kind of vectors like this, but even if there was, there were this kind of vector, again, the MCU can be considered as an, that's the outside world. And the inside world is the secure element and the secure element implements the signature, implements the cryptography and sprint, prints the data on the screen. So now comes the question of whether this is for you or not. So they actually dropped the price of the ledger nano S. This is now at 59 us dollars. And this is almost a double. This is at nine, $119. So it's actually a substantial chunk and it really depends on your needs. So if you don't have a lot of coins, if you're mostly focused on saving Bitcoin and you don't want Bluetooth, then definitely stick with the ledger nano S. It's actually much cheaper now and much more affordable. So if you need the ledger X or not depends on whether two things, if you have a lot of coins, if you have a lot of coins, this has more memory. So we can store more coins. We can store more coins and the other one to probably the biggest one is if you need to use crypto on the go or not. So this is a big caveat for me as well. And I think this is an important discussion point. And it depends on how much you need, how much crypto you need on the go, because normally what I use is I use a software wallet on my iOS. The engine wallet by probably saw me using that and it's generally easy to use because it's just one device. You don't have two devices and can flip through it, use it and you put as much money as you would, you know, normally carry out cash. Just not too much. Now with the ledger, you have an extra layer of security there, which is a separate device, a separate screen and a separate secure element, which means that even if your phone is breached, then they can't hackers can't steal anything from this device. But the downside is that, well, hackers can't. But what if someone physically robs you? And if that is the case, then you don't really don't want to be carrying around like, say, 10,000, 100,000 or even a million dollars worth of crypto. The good news, I guess, is that you can choose to lock it in your safe or take it out when you really need to. And if you do need to, you can use it with your phone, which is actually safer than using with your PC because the phone has less vulnerabilities and less zero day hacks. So it really just depends on what you need to use it for. If you want to take it out for a go and if you do need to go out with it, definitely this is a good solution for you. If not, this works just as well. And that's it for a quick sneak peek of the Ledger Nano X. If you guys are interested in ordering advice, use my link below. It does help out the channel a little bit. And if you guys have any other questions, I'll try to answer them in a future video once the full product does get released and it's a little bit more streamlined. So I did have to know and tell you guys that there are some interfaces that might be slightly different from this video than from the final release because they're still optimizing a little bit of the flow there as well. Thank you guys so much for watching this video. If this video helped you in any way, please do share it with your friends. And if you guys have any questions, remember to hit me down in the comment section below and I'll try to answer them as soon as possible. Thank you guys so much for watching. See you next time.