Nicolas Bacca
Chef at Le Centre
Paris, Ile-de-France
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolNicolas Bacca is a seasoned security and hardware wallet pioneer with 13 years in embedded security, cryptography, and product leadership, best known as co-founder of Ledger and VP of its Innovation Lab. He began his career architecting smartcard systems at Oberthur, founded startups (Ubinity, Simulity) to commercialize secure devices and FIDO U2F concepts, and helped turn BTChip into the first Ledger hardware wallet. A hands-on engineer, he has deep open-source contributions to Ledger’s apps and integrations (ledgerjs, app-bitcoin, app-ethereum) and has driven device-level transaction signing, P2SH/SegWit support and firmware compatibility across wallets like Electrum and Mycelium. Now based in Paris, he combines product vision with low-level cryptographic implementation experience, and recently moved into accelerating crypto ecosystem defenses and metaverse discovery through zknox and Le Centre. An uncommon strength is his continuity from ISO/Smartcard standards work to modern blockchain hardware security, bridging decades of secure-element expertise into consumer crypto products.
13 years of coding experience
25 years of employment as a software developer
Classes Préparatoires Physique P, Classes Préparatoires Physique P at Lycée LavoisierBaccalauréat C (assez bien), Baccalauréat C (assez bien) at Lycée Louis-le-GrandMaster of Science - MS Computer science / Monetics, Master of Science - MS Computer science / Monetics at ENSICAEN - Ecole Nationale Supérieure d'Ingénieurs de Caen
Github Skills (34)
ec10
transaction10
javascript10
code-signing10
python10
firmware10
bitcoin10
el10
ledger10
bitcoins10
c1110
segwit10
integrations10
signing10
java10
Programming languages (16)
Github contributions (5)
LedgerHQ/app-ethereum
May 2016 - Mar 2022
Ethereum wallet application for Ledger devices
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:28 reviews, 172 commits, 24 PRs in 5 years 10 months
Contributions summary:Nicolas contributed significantly to the Ethereum wallet application, introducing support for message signing on the Nano-S device. The user's changes focused on modifying core code files, including the addition of new instructions and structures for message signing. They also updated the tokens list by adding new ERC-20 tokens. Furthermore, the user fixed some bugs, such as correcting non-decimal display glitches and resolving USB crash issues, demonstrating proficiency in the codebase and its functionalities.
ethereum-wallet
LedgerHQ/ledgerjs
Apr 2015 - Jan 2022
⛔️ MOVED to monorepo "ledger-live"
Role in this project:Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:1 review, 50 commits, 25 PRs in 6 years 10 months
Contributions summary:Nicolas contributed significantly to the `BTChip` module, which appears to be a core component of the project, likely used for interacting with Ledger hardware wallets. The commits involve implementing and fixing methods for transaction signing, including those related to P2SH transactions, and other cryptographic operations, suggesting a focus on the security and functionality of interacting with the ledger hardware. The user also refactored parts of the code, for example, fixing a bug in `ByteString.js` for `bytes` method. Further, the user made modifications to the library to support ZCash's Sapling upgrade.
monorepo
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