Ledger partners up with tech giant, Intel 

Earlier this month, Ledger, the leading cryptocurrency hardware wallet manufacturing company, announced its collaboration with the renowned security firm, Gemalto. For its next step towards expansion, Ledger just announced another partnership, now with the multinational technology corporation, Intel. The objective of this partnership is to combine Ledger’s unique operating system, ‘Blockchain Open Ledger Operating System’ (BOLOS), with Intel’s ‘Software Extension Guard’ (SGX).

With the increased popularity of bitcoin and other digital assets, security concerns are becoming more frequent. Ledger CEO, Eric Larchevêque, expressed, “we have seen an increasing demand from the market for security solutions to manage crypto assets over the past couple of years.” Legder’s Partnership with Gemalto was also based on providing security infrastructure for cryptocurrency-based activities by applying BOLOS.

Ledger explained the purpose of cooperation with Intel as a way to continue to provide their growing client base with innovative solutions. The Intel SGX solution is an Intel technology developed to protect select code and data from disclosure or alteration. It functions by creating secure areas called SGX enclaves. With this unique solution, these enclaves will be used in place of applications, for storing sensitive data and protecting the miner’s private keys. This will limit a variety of software attacks and privacy concerns.

Intel computers will provide their users with the choice to download the enclave software. In the announcement, Intel further clarified, “private keys will be automatically generated and all cryptocurrency transactions will be signed within the Intel SGX secure enclave.” Moreover, in order to secure the code of the software, Intel has deployed the SGX extension in the application.

“By deploying Intel SGX, Ledger’s security for blockchain solutions gains instant scalability across Intel 8th Generation core platforms,” explains Rick Echevarria, the general manager of the platforms security division at Intel. In the announcement, Intel also revealed that the solution will initially be deployed within cryptocurrency software wallets, such as MyEtherWallet and Electrum.

Ledger recently became one of Europe’s most-funded blockchain operations in March, by securing $7 million in a Series A funding round. As part of its expansion, the firm intends to use this funding to build a factory in China.