EP - 33

Solana: How to build with Ledger? (w/ Dan Albert)

with

Dan Albert
Executive director of the Solana Foundation

Mar 22, 2022

It has always been part of Ledger’s DNA to encourage developers to enrich the ecosystem by making their code open source.

This ethos led to the momentous integration of one of the largest and fastest blockchains, Solana, a network that took 2021 by storm thanks to its transaction speed, low fees, energy efficiency, and of course developer activity.

Joining the Ledger Podcast to discuss how this integration happened is Dan Albert, Executive Director at the Solana Foundation, and Fabrice Dautriat, Head of Ledger’s Developer Ecosystem.

Key Highlights:

The Solana Foundation’s Gigabrain Mission

Dan Albert defined the Solana Foundation’s role as fostering “the growth of the solana network and the solana ecosystem really kind of at the broadest levels”.

[The ambitious long-term objective is to] have one billion people onboarded into crypto holding their private keys with the ability to to sign transactions”. – Dan Albert.

He likened this goal to the current ubiquity of understanding usernames and passwords, aiming for similar accessibility with public key + private key key pair signing to access the web3 world.

To achieve this, the network must be the fastest, most secure, most high performance blockchain network. Dan admitted that the infrastructure work the Foundation performs often happens under the radar and gets taken for granted.

He acknowledged his team’s essential, often unsung role, the heroes behind the scenes that no one talks about but that are quite essential to how any blockchain, especially Solana blockchain actually operates.

Watch the full episode below:

The Collaborative Journey to Ledger Live Integration

Fabrice detailed the evolution of Ledger’s relationship with Solana like wallet support and secure key management, at least two years prior, around the time of the mainnet release.

However, the native integration into Ledger Wallet was driven by user demand. Users increasingly want Ledger Wallet to serve as their own crypto bank and be able to see all their assets in a single place and Solana was missing at the time.

Adopting a new mindset, Ledger stepped back from doing the heavy development itself, instead, the Ledger Wallet development was performed externally in only three to four weeks to create a valid implementation.

Dan Albert highlighted that security was prioritized from the start.

A Solana Labs engineer, Trent, built the original application in 2019, before mainnet, to ensure that the accounts used to launch the network were secured by keys held on a Ledger Nano.

Layers of Security and the Evolution of the Wallet

Fabrice outlined Ledger’s three-level approach to integration, emphasizing that it all starts with securing the private keys:

Hardware Wallet Layer: Securing your keys in an application dedicated to Nano S or Ledger Nano X.
External Wallet Compatibility: Ensuring the Ledger device is easy to connect to external services like Sole Flare or Phantom. Fabrice noted that Ledger doesn’t judge which external wallets users prefer.
Ledger Live Integration: Allowing users to perform basic operations and, eventually, specialized features like staking, tokens, and apps.

Dan Albert, sharing an old school developer perspective, admitted that he still prefers interacting with his Ledger via a command line interface (a text terminal with no graphical interface).

He explained that this was all the team had for for a long time when the Ledger app first rolled out. Fabrice contrasted this with the current ecosystem, where a lot of people are relying on easy to use interfaces, demonstrating how the ecosystem grew tremendously once graphical user interfaces became available.

Infrastructure and Developer Incentives

The Solana Foundation actively works to create the necessary conditions for growth. Dan detailed their efforts, which include a large and expanding grant giving pipeline for projects that promote growth and decentralization, even if they aren’t immediately profitable.

The Foundation also offers:

Validator Incentives: A delegation program distributing treasury stake to delegators who meet performance requirements, encouraging more people to run more validator nodes.
Data Center Advocacy: Engaging with large enterprise hosting providers to get them to offer Solana specific configurations and advocate against clauses in their terms of service that actually bans use for certain crypto projects. This led to the Solana foundation server program.
Hacker Houses: Hosting five-day offline events globally, where developers can hack together, attend technical workshops, and hold demo days to display what they’ve built.

For developers wanting to build on Ledger, Fabrice advises them to visit the developer portal at developer.ledger.com and get in touch, as Ledger must manage the security audit, code review, and quality assurance processes.

The Next Frontier: Staking, NFTs, and Clear Signing

Looking ahead, Fabrice confirmed that staking is the big focus now for Ledger Live. After staking, the next major feature will be NFTs for Solana integration.

The ultimate goal for Ledger Live integration involves Clear Signing, which is the opposite of blind signing—the major security threat where users approve transactions without understanding their true intent.

Fabrice emphasized that the biggest challenge and added value Ledger provides is securing interactions because hackers trick you in signing operations that you don’t actually verify. Clear signing will ensure users can check on the signer and verify.

Excitement for 2022: Solana Pay and the Nano S Plus

When asked about the most exciting milestones for 2022, both leaders focused on major adoption drivers:

Solana Pay: Dan highlighted the recent rollout of Solana Pay, a simple protocol allowing merchants and points of sale to accept payment using the Solana network in stablecoins or other tokens. He emphasized the tremendous amount of interest and growth in the payment space because the fees and latency are so low.
He noted that users can go to a coffee shop and buy a coffee and tap to pay with their wallet.
Hardware and Staking: Fabrice’s immediate focus was the launch of the Nano S Plus. For Solana, the priority is completing the staking integration, followed closely by NFTs as well.

Dan advised any newbie interested in Solana to look for the “wow effect” that comes from having an experience that feels like they’re using a web2 app.

Reading List

Learn more about these topics mentioned in the episode, or explore our library of articles on Crypto, Security, and Regulation on Ledger Academy