Vitalik Buterin donated a total of 256 ETH to two privacy-focused crypto messengers, Session and SimpleX Chat, to advance metadata privacy and permissionless messaging as a core aspect of digital freedom.

Each project received 128 ETH, with Buterin publicly announcing the gifts on X and framing digital privacy as essential for anonymous, permissionless communication beyond standard encryption.

The donations, worth roughly $760,000 at the time, signal support for next steps in digital privacy, including permissionless account creation and protection of metadata.

While promising, the projects face real-world challenges and are not yet perfect software, underscoring the need for ongoing developer attention to privacy and security.

Session’s co-founder, Chris McCabe, emphasizes raising global awareness about encrypted decentralized messaging and privacy as a right, urging users to understand data practices and trustless privacy.

Buterin notes persistent technical challenges for decentralized messaging, such as metadata privacy, Sybil resistance, DoS resistance, multi-device security, and potential phone-number-independent attacks.

He stresses that decentralization is key to strong metadata privacy and that achieving it requires addressing Sybil/DoS resistance across both the network and client devices.

Industry figures view the donations as a morale boost and a reminder to unite in protecting digital privacy amid regulatory pressures, including the EU’s Chat Control proposal, with an emphasis on decentralization.

Session aims to strip identifiers and metadata common to traditional messaging by operating without central servers and avoiding phone-number-based IDs; SimpleX Chat likewise avoids phone-number reliance and identifiable IDs.

Session uses onion routing-based decentralized networking, while SimpleX Chat focuses on protocol design that omits user identifiers, both seeking to move away from centralized server models.

The donations are intended to accelerate development of privacy-centric, decentralized messaging that protects metadata and emphasizes anonymity and lack of user identifiers.

Buterin urged people to download and use the apps and shared donation addresses through official channels to drive broader adoption and community engagement.

The contributions are valued at about $320,000 based on current ETH prices, reflecting ongoing support for privacy and public-good initiatives in crypto.