The Ledger Nano S (read our review) is one of the most popular and secure ways to store Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.
When you own cryptocurrencies, you need to protect your confidential data and the access to your funds.
1,000+ Supported Coins
According to Ledger’s website, the Nano S natively supports 1,000+ coins, including most of the major coins and any ERC20 token:
- Bitcoin (BTC)
- Bcash (BCH)
- Binance Coin (BNB)
- Cardano (ADA)
- Dash
- Dogecoin
- Eos
- Ethereum
- Ethereum Classic
- Litecoin
- Monero
- Ripple (XRP)
- Stellar
- Tether (USDT)
- Tron (TRX)
- Vertcoin
- Zcash
Other Compatible Wallets
The Ledger Nano S operates with its own cryptocurrencies wallet interfaces: Ledger Live application. You can also use other compatible software wallets from the following list:
Of course, the very popular third-party wallet Electrum is also compatible with Ledger Nano S and Nano X.
Ethereum and ERC20 Tokens
Other Ethereum tokens (ERC20 tokens) can be managed using Nano S when used in-conjunction with the MyEtherWallet only (it won’t work with the Ledger Wallet application alone):
MyEtherWallet is a popular online Ethereum wallet which you can use as an alternative to the Ledger Ethereum Chrome application. It supports natively the Nano S on Chrome and Opera, without the need to install any app or plug-in.
To manage your Ethereum account, go to the MyEtherWallet website (not the Chrome extension plugin) and select the “Send Ether & Tokens” tab. Plug your Ledger device, select the Ethereum app and go to the settings of the app to activate “Browser support”:
This will enable the direct connection to the browser and MyEtherWallet will be able to detect your device (note that if you wish to use the Ledger Ethereum Chrome application, you’ll have to disable Browser support).
Select the “Ledger Wallet” option and click on “Connect your Ledger Wallet”:
If you have an ERC20 token which is not supported by MyEtherWallet, you can access your account on MyEtherWallet.
and choose “Add Custom Token” with the following information related to the token: Contract address, Token Symbol and its decimals.
Ledger Live
The Ledger Live app is available for free on Chrome for Windows, Mac OS, Linux or Chrome OS. It runs flawlessly with your Ledger device.
All Ledger Apps are fully open source, so anyone can access the full source code to authenticate the code and contribute to the development.
- 1,000+ Supported Coins
- Other Compatible Wallets
- Ethereum and ERC20 Tokens
- Ledger Live
- Ledger Roadmap
You can extend your Ledger Wallet features by installing new applications using the official Ledger Live app.
The app helps you upgrade the firmware of your device to keep your Ledger Wallet up-to-date in order to benefit from the latest security features available.
When a new alt coin is added to the Ledger Nano S, you will only need to download the last app (free) or update the firmware. If you want to check if a cryptocurrency is planned to be supported, you can consult their
Ledger Roadmap
Ledger is using this roadmap board to communicate about its future consumers products, features, and implementations. They use the community feedback to help prioritize developments.
Of particular note is that Ledger is currently working on adding a Bolos app for Zen protocol, and they are also working on a recovery tool for coins sent to the wrong address (i.e. Bitcoin sent to a Litecoin address).
Full Node Support with Ledger Live
Ledger recently announced coin control and full node support is also coming soon (though we do not yet know when). This feature has long been a part of the roadmap for Ledger so it’s great to see it making its way to the wallets soon.
You can watch the full announcement below:
Ledger Live will soon feature Full Node support, as announced by @ledger CEO @_pgauthier at @surfinbitcoin.
— David da Silva Rosa (@dldasilvarosa) October 2, 2020
"we want to build products on the principles of privacy and liberty" pic.twitter.com/NCSgKzhrsl
With full-node support, users can now connect their full node to Ledger Live, Ledger’s native wallet software, so that they no longer need to utilize Ledger’s node and thereby expose their xpub (and, by extension, all of their blockchain activity).
Coin Control
Coin Control is the ability to select which UTXOs you spend so that you can decide between a LIFO (Last In, First Out) or FIFO (First In, First Out).
In the same announcement mentioned above, Ledger promised that Coin Control would be coming to Ledger Live, and now its finally here as part of Ledger Live’s advanced settings. That makes Ledger the only one of these hardware wallets to support coin control natively.
