Ledger Wallet Software Limitations Prevent Some Cardano Users from Claiming the "Glacier Airdrop"

PANews reported on August 6th that, according to Decrypt, software limitations on Ledger hardware wallets are preventing some Cardano users from participating in the Midnight Foundation's two-month "Glacier Drop" airdrop, which will distribute NIGHT tokens across eight blockchain ecosystems. This is due to Ledger's implementation of the CIP-8 protocol, which limits messages to 31 bytes, while airdrop messages are 251 bytes, which the current firmware cannot support. Cardano co-founder Charles Hoskinson stated that this is a Cardano-specific issue in the Ledger software, which was reported in July, but Ledger has not yet provided an update timeline. Fahmi Syed, chairman of the Midnight Foundation, confirmed the issue, stating that they are in communication with Ledger and that similar issues exist with XRP and Avalanche, with a solution expected to be released in the coming weeks.

While Ledger has yet to release a fix, Cardano developers are working on a workaround. According to Hoskinson, the system will use empty transactions containing the Glacier Airdrop payload as metadata, rather than traditional message signatures. This workaround will be integrated into the Glacier Airdrop protocol to allow affected users to claim their tokens.