Layer designs Ledger Stax hardware wallet for storing cryptocurrency

Design studio Layer has collaborated with tech model Ledger and designer Tony Fadell to provide Ledger Stax, a screen-wrapped, credit score card-sized machine for storing cryptocurrency and NFTs.

Ledger Stax is a {hardware} pockets — a tool that shops the digital keys wanted to encrypt and decrypt crypto property offline, the place they’re thought-about to be most safe. Customers can even view and ship their cryptocurrency and non-fungible tokens (NFTs) via the machine.

Layer developed the product with French firm Ledger, which has beforehand designed the Nano {hardware} wallets. The preliminary thought got here from Fadell, who led iPod growth at Apple and co-founded Nest Labs, now Google Nest.

Ledger Stax is constructed on the identical structure because the Nano collection, however has a novel kind that Layer says elevates the expertise of interacting with cryptocurrencies and NFTs.

Its distinctive function is an e-ink display screen that wraps across the entrance floor and backbone of the machine, permitting for intuitive contact interplay and, given the expertise’s power effectivity, a battery lifetime of weeks or months.

Layer founder Benjamin Hubert considers the e-ink display screen an “underused” expertise that matches completely with the closely text-based wants of Ledger Stax and permits it to have a distinct kind of design language, freed from the expectations set by telephones.

Pictures or NFTs may be displayed in greyscale on the lock display screen, serving to to personalise the machine, which is across the identical dimension as a bank card however just a little thicker, with a six-millimetre-wide backbone.

The design additionally invitations the stacking of a number of gadgets within the method of bodily foreign money or typical ledgers. Adjoining gadgets will magnetically maintain collectively, giving customers the power to organise their portfolios throughout separate gadgets whereas clearly figuring out them from the labelling on the backbone.

In addition to permitting customers to handle their crypto property, Ledger Stax can be utilized to discover Web3 apps via the Ledger Stay app, which additionally connects the machine to a smartphone.

The machine has an aluminium casing that Layer says provides it a reassuring weight within the hand and emphasises its safe nature. Its mushy edges enable for simple grip.

Along with the touchscreen, it has a single button offering the performance to energy the machine on and off, and lock and unlock the display screen.

Layer has been engaged on Ledger Stax for 2 years. Hubert believes that though the worth of cryptocurrencies has plummeted in current months, it has by no means been a greater time to launch the product, because it offers folks with an alternative choice to utilizing centralised exchanges for storage.

“Crypto market ebb and stream apart, the necessity for folks to know and why they need to take their property into their very own fingers has grown within the wake of current information,” Hubert advised Dezeen. “A preferred expression on the planet of crypto is ‘not your keys, not your cash’, which refers to needing to personal the non-public keys related along with your funds.”

“It has by no means been extra acceptable with the struggles a lot of centralised exchanges have been coping with — most notably, the collapse of FTX — and the tragic fallout for the common particular person,” he continued.

“Ledger’s safe structure will proceed to cleared the path in that regard, and Ledger Stax couldn’t come at a greater time.”

In accordance with Hubert, its e-ink display screen additionally makes Ledger Stax extra sustainable than many different client gadgets as this expertise attracts much less energy and solely when it refreshes, moderately than consistently as O-LED screens are inclined to.

Sustainability is an space the place cryptocurrency and NFTs have beforehand come beneath criticism, as a result of quantity of laptop processing energy that they require. Nevertheless, Hubert says that extra energy-efficient options are slowly being provided, pointing to Ethereum’s swap from utilizing a proof-of-work to a proof-of-stake mannequin earlier this yr for example.

“As crypto continues to mature, there’ll probably be extra of this – and there are already many different gamers within the area that supply sustainability as a part of their ethos,” mentioned Hubert.

The designer, who has what he describes as a “average funding” within the cryptocurrency Ethereum, says the challenge suited Layer’s curiosity in working with applied sciences that allow and complement cultural shifts.

“Like all market, Ethereum has its ups and downs however I feel it has a promising future,” mentioned Hubert. “It is thrilling to be a part of an rising monetary market, and dealing with Ledger has solely cemented my perception within the potential of crypto.”

Ledger Stax is Layer’s second crypto product following Trove, a system incorporating a watch-like wearable machine. The studio frequently works within the tech area, and has additionally not too long ago designed good glasses for Viture and a meditation headset for Resonate.