Ledger Nano S App Updates, GUI Support, and Monitoring Software: August 31, 2018 Update

Obsidian Systems has been working to make Tezos more secure and accessible, and we’re happy to announce:

We’ve released version 1.3.2 of our Wallet and Baking Applications for the Ledger Nano S

Work is underway to enable 3rd party GUI support for our Wallet Application

Our Monitoring Software is nearing its first release

Updated Applications for the Ledger Nano S

We’re pleased to announce that version 1.3 of our Wallet and Baking Applications for the Ledger Nano S have been released! The full release notes can be found here. The most notable features in this upgrade are:

The Wallet Application now includes Universal 2nd Factor (U2F) support, the standard way Ledger devices communicate with web wallets. This, combined with our work on LedgerJS, enables 3rd party GUI support for the Ledger Nano S.

The Wallet Application now displays details about the operation it is signing (e.g. a transaction, delegation, or account origination). Details about these operations, like how many tez you are sending or where you are sending them, will now be displayed in the UI of the Ledger device. Not only does this make the device more usable, verifying information on the ledger greatly improves security.

The Baking Application’s high water mark feature has been extended to include endorsements in addition to block headers. This feature helps prevent double-baking by refusing to sign a block of equal or lesser level than a block it has already baked. That now applies to endorsements, too.

This release is immediately available on our Github. We’re also working with the Ledger team to make it available in Ledger Manager and Ledger Live as developer items on Tuesday, September 4.

Note: The Baking Application currently has two versions in Ledger Manager: Tezos Baking (our v1.1) and TezBake (v1.2). We anticipate TezBake will be removed and Tezos Baking will be upgraded to version 1.3. Once that happens, you will not be able to remove TezBake from your Ledger via Ledger Manager’s GUI. Instructions for removing a Ledger Application via command line can be found here. We plan to release tool for removing TezBake (or other applications) in the future.

Update: Ledger has updated these applications in Ledger Live

LedgerJS Support for Tezos

Ledger maintains a library (LedgerJS) which enables communication between web wallets and the Ledger Nano S. We’ve been working on an update to that library which adds Tezos support, a crucial step towards enabling 3rd party GUI support for our Wallet Application.

You can view the current status of our work here. We’ve been in contact with some wallet providers, and are happy to assist them as they incorporate Ledger hardware wallet support. If you are a wallet provider and we have not yet spoken, please email us at tezos@obsidian.systems!

Monitoring Software

Our monitoring software is nearing its first release! This first version will monitor nodes and immediate alert the owner should any issues arise, such as a lost connection, change in branch, or if the node has fallen behind. This is an important first step towards software that will eventually run a node and baker via a GUI. If you are a solo baker, we encourage you to reach out by emailing us at tezos@obsidian.systems. We’d love to talk about how this software can meet your needs!

We’d like to thank the Tezos Foundation for their support and the members of our Baker Chat for feedback, testing and bug reports. If you are interested in joining, please email us at tezos@obsidian.systems for an invite!

9/4/18 Edit: We’ve amended a bug in version 1.3 of the Ledger Applications. That bug was fixed in 1.3.1, however the version number was not incremented and remained 1.3.0. Version 1.3.2, linked to above, has the bug fix and a correct version number. For more information, see our Reddit Post on the topic.