Currently, Cardano holders are not able to view their ADA token balances or their value on the Ledger Live application. Considering the large number of ADA token holders who also use Ledger devices for cold storage, this functionality is long overdue. More so, considering that the Ledger Live application is open source and written in JavaScript, HTML and CSS. This means support for ADA can be easily added by a web developer.
This project seeks to add the functionalities of viewing ADA balances and portfolio value in Ledger Live, which is an open source application written in JavaScript, HTML and CSS. The project plans to use data from cardanoscan.io and the Ethereum account code in Ledger Live as a reference to allow for Cardano to have full account support in Ledger Live for both ADA and tokens. This proposal includes support for Cardano in both the desktop and mobile versions of Ledger Live. Therefore, the proposal seeks to allow the viewing of account balances and tokens with price data pulled from public sources. This integration will however, not enable the purchase of ADA in the Ledger Live app.
Development Process
The Ledger Live Support proposal has been put forward by Kaz Walker, a professional web developer with more than 15 years’ experience. According to Walker, the code would be completed in approximately 2 months for both desktop and mobile and would require a total of 4 months for total development. The goal of the project is to have Cardano account support merged into Ledger Live within 6 months after being funded. The development will be done using public forks of the Ledger Live apps on Walker’s GitHub account (https://github.com/KazW) so that progress can be monitored by the community.
This project has a primary risk where by 2 pull requests would need to be accepted by the Ledger Live team, one for desktop support, and another for mobile. This is a risk since ultimately, the decision to accept the code into Ledger Live is left to a 3rd party and not one of the authors of this proposal. To mitigate this risk, Walker has added a margin to the budget to allow for the Ledger Live team to request code changes during the review process.
Requested Budget
According to Walker, the project will be built during his weekends, where he has dedicated 16 hours per weekend to meet the goal of completing the integration within the 4 months. Therefore, the project will take up 256 hours of development over the four months. Walker will charge a $50 hourly rate amounting to$12,800. Additionally, he has added a ~20% margin which will address any potential changes that may be required to make the code acceptable to the Ledger Live team.
For these reasons, the amount of requested funds is $15,000.
Closing Thoughts
This proposal seems to have some support from the community, as many Cardano users would love to keep their ADA tokens in Ledger without using the Yoroi or Daedalus wallets. This proposal seeks to enable ADA holders to view their balances within Ledger Live, which can be pulled from cardanoscan.io.
The challenge associated with this proposal currently is the lack of support or go ahead from the Ledger team, who might not be confident making their product dependent on a third party. If the team failed to give consent, the efforts of Walker would be pointless regardless of the support and funding offered by the Project Catalyst community.
Walker has however put in place measures to help prevent such a scenario by allowing the Ledger team to request for code during the review process and communicating in advance with the team for consent to continue working on the proposal. If these are successful, this proposal, when fully developed, should help the thousands of people who use Ledger Live but cannot view their ADA token balances and portfolio value. The proposal seeks to eliminate the need for Yoroi or Daedalus wallets in such cases where users only need to check their portfolio.
