Donation of 256ETH, Vitalik bet on privacy newsletters: Why Session and SimpleX
What's the difference between these private chat tools? What technical route is Vitalik holding
Original title: What is the application of the Vitalik donated private communications session and SimpleX
Original by ChandlerZ, Foresight News
Vitalik Buterin, the founder of the Ether Workshop, recently focused on a relatively cold track: privacy instant messaging. On X, he wrote that end-to-end encrypted communications were essential to privacy protection, that the next key was "unlicensed account creation" and "enhanced metadata privacy protection" and that he had publicly named two applications that were moving in that direction — Ssession and SimpleX. To that end, he donated 128 ETH each to the two applications。
This makes a specific question, and what is the difference between these primary privacy chat tools today, where Twitter, Telegram, and WhatsApp already dominate users? What technical route is Vitalik holding
Vitalik Why: From content encryption to metadata privacy
Vitalik's emphasis is more of a concern than how much money he donated。
In his presentation, the existing end-to-end encryption only solved the confidentiality of the "message content" but there were two obvious short sheets:
The account creates a cell phone / mailbox, which does not really "no permission"
I don't knowMAINSTREAM IM (INCLUDING MANY ENCRYPTED CHAT TOOLS) REQUIRES REGISTRATION WITH A MOBILE PHONE NUMBER。
I don't knowThis means that telecommunications operators, mailbox service providers and even national regulators can become "one-point dependency" on your digital identity。
Metadata are still highly exposed
I don't knowWho's talking to who, when, how long, which device, which network, are all metadata。
I don't knowEven if the message is encrypted, a sufficiently fine social network map can still outline a person ' s life trajectory and relationship network。
Vitalik makes it clear in the tweets that to make a breakthrough on both points would almost certainly mean moving towards a higher degree of decentrization. "Metadata privacy protection needs to be decentralised, which in itself is difficult to achieve; this is compounded by the multi-equipment support that users expect. In addition, it has become more difficult to resist witch attacks / denial of service attacks on the news-routing network and on the user side (without mandatory reliance on telephone numbers). These issues require more attention. I don't know
Sessions and SimpleX became his two projects of naming and donating. It also indicated, however, that neither software was perfect and that there was still a long way to go before the best user experience and safety could really be achieved。
What's a session
If you sum up the session in one sentence, it's more like an encrypted chat tool that tries to move Signal half-step forward: Keep end-to-end encryption while minimizing the system ' s presence of mobile phone numbers, centralized servers and observable metadata. On the surface, there is little difference between the way in which the session is used and the normal IM - installation of applications, generation of accounts, addition of contacts, creation of groups, sending of text and files, which are familiar. At the bottom, however, it made a number of key changes to the "account" and "message network"。
The first is the system of accounts. Ssession does not require a user to provide a cell phone number or a mailbox, and the system generates a random set of Ssession IDs for you when you first enter the application, which is your only identifier. The platform does not have your real contact details, nor does it need to rely on telecommunication operators or mailbox service providers to endorse them. This is a direct circumvention of the current mainstream IM generally relies on a real or semi-real registration system that allows the creation of accounts more formally than Vitalik says without permission。
Next is the transmission path of the message. Ssession is not a central backend for forwarding and storing all data, but is built on the Oxen block chain and its Service Node network。
Simplely understood, these Service Nodes are involved in both block validation and the role of relaying and storing messages in the network, forming a decentrized communications network. When the message passes between nodes, it passes through an onion route like Tor, and each node knows only the first jump and the second jump, and cannot see the full path, thus designing to minimize the likelihood that single-point entities will have access to your communication links。
Of course, this structure also brings with it realistic empirical trade-offs. Onion routers and decentrized storages naturally make delay and stability less than a dedicated link to the central server; on multi-equipment usage and synchronization, Session is not yet able to automatically pull history-wide silk slides like Telegram or whatsApp simply log-in a new device。
In May this year, Session announced the official launch of the original SESH and its migration to Arbitrum, which will be used to stimulate the DePIN network of more than 2,000 nodes. In the economics of tokens, the maximum supply of SESH tokens was 2.4 billion, of which 80 million were unlocked at the time of initial issuance. The nodal operator is required to pledge 25,000 SESH tokens for network maintenance。
What's SimpleX
The goal of the SimpleX is more radical than that of the Ssession: rather than enhancing privacy within the framework of existing instant messaging, it has redesigned almost from the protocol level a means of communication that does not produce aggregate metadata as much as possible。
In SimpleX, instead of sending messages to each other through two accounts, both sides received and sent them through a series of pre-established one-way news queues. You can imagine that each relationship corresponds to a set of conduits that only serve this relationship, that the messages are relayed along these lines by relay servers, but the servers see only data going from this line to that line, but it is difficult to spell out a complete social profile at the protocol level。
SINCE THERE IS NO CONVENTIONAL GLOBAL USER ID IN THE SYSTEM, OUTSIDE OBSERVERS ARE NOT ABLE, AS IN MANY CENTRALIZED IMS, TO ANALYZE METADATA ON THE SIDE OF THE SERVER THAT THIS PERSON HAS BEEN TALKING TO RECENTLY, HOW TO INTERACT, HOW TO STRUCTURE THE COMMUNITY。
The impact of such design on user experience is also quite evident. It's harder to get a sense of familiarity with SimpleX than with Ssession. You can't search for a user name and friend like in Telegram, but rely more on a one-time invitation link, two-dimensional code or out-of-band channel to connect. Multi-equipment use, data backup and migration are no longer a paradigm of automatic synchronization by entering a mobile phone number or password, but require user understanding and alignment with the work stream that the design is designed to produce for privacy。
These additional steps are necessary sacrifices from the perspective of a quest for extreme privacy; but from the point of view of the general public, they can be directly translated into a higher threshold and mental burden。
As a result, SimpleX is more like a small tool for users who are extremely interested in the exposure of metadata and are willing to bear the cost of experience. It may find it difficult to obtain large-scale mainstream users in a short time, but provides a very clear sample of controls on the technical path. If we really consider the reduction of observable metadata to be the highest priority, not the function, convenience or size of the user, then what can instant communication protocols do。
Vitalik chose to donate funds for it, to a large extent, to pay for this experiment, which tried to erase user IDs and social maps at the protocol level, giving this relatively idealistic route more time to grind and integrator。
Back to that simple question, are these tools worth the attention of ordinary users
It's hard to get around Signal when it comes to Ssession and SimpleX, which have been almost the industry pole of "private chat" for the last few years. Today, a large number of encrypted communications protocols on the market have, to varying degrees, adopted or built upon Signal Protocol, which has established a relatively sophisticated set of engineering standards for end-to-end encryption using dual Ratchet, forward-to-face confidentiality mechanisms。
For most users, Signal has provided a more balanced choice between security, ease of use and cross-platform support, as long as the chat object is willing to move the platform. Open source realization, content-to-end encryption, interface proximity to mainstream IM, and support for multi-platform use have the advantages of making it one of the preferred tools for journalists, defenders, developers and privacy lovers。
Vitalik Buterin spoke at the International Week of the Shanghai Block Chain 2025, saying that with the development of ZK technology, "not your key, not your coin" would become "not your security, not you key" and that the credibility of hardware would become the focus of developments in the field of cryptography and security. Encrypted communications, including Signal, are now available, and the marginal cost of password technology is already negligible, so users are not aware。
IT BELIEVES THAT AS ENCRYPTION COSTS FALL FURTHER, THERE WILL BE MORE AND MORE APPLICATIONS THAT CAN BE USED IN THE FUTURE, RANGING FROM "WHY ZK" TO "WHY NOT ZK", AND IT LOOKS FORWARD TO EXPLORING NEW USES WITH DEVELOPERS AROUND THE WORLD。
But for industry practitioners and privacy-sensitive users, the more realistic question is not which tool will be the next one, but two more specific options。
Would you like to pay a little more for privacy? Do you accept that one or two more chat portals outside the default world for specific relationships or scenes? In other words, it's not about changing the main power of IM, but about making an extra safe house for really sensitive conversations。
If your answer is yes, those names probably don't have to wait until they're in circles. Even if it is difficult for them to become the primary chat tool for ordinary users in the short term, Vitalik, the named Session and SimpleX, have already provided at least two clear routes: one, in a familiar IM form, to minimize reliance on metadata and accounts; and the other, simply to open up the user ID at the protocol level and try not to create social maps in the system。
In terms of whether this is a matter of concern to ordinary people, they may not need to occupy the most visible row of your mobile phone, but they are worth making a corner on the table for the part of the conversation that you do not want to give to the big platform。
📅Diterbitkan：2025/11/28 12:44
🔄Diperbarui：2025/11/28 12:44
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