The awakening of private communication: Why does Vitalik support Session and SimpleX Chat?

When Privacy Becomes a Fundamental Right

On November 27, 2025, Ethereum founder Vitalik posted a groundbreaking statement on X: he donated 128 ETH each to two decentralized communication applications, Session and SimpleX Chat, and explicitly stated—“Privacy protection is not just a feature, but a fundamental necessity.” What does this statement reflect?

The threats posed by the EU’s “Chat Control” proposal, the frequent data breaches worldwide, and the increasing suppression of communication platforms by regulators—these real-world issues are pushing a consensus to surface: traditional communication tools are becoming data collection machines. Mainstream apps like Telegram, WhatsApp, Signal face a common dilemma—either surrender user privacy or face regulatory bans.

Vitalik’s support for these two projects stems from their solutions to two core challenges:

First, permissionless account creation—no phone number, no email, no identity verification needed. Just a string of 66 randomly generated characters, and users can instantly start communicating. This fundamentally breaks the identity linkage chain; even if account data leaks, it won’t trigger a chain reaction.

Second, metadata privacy protection—a critical vulnerability overlooked by most. Even if your chat content is perfectly encrypted, sending time, sender IP, receiver address, message length—these seemingly insignificant “x” factors—can be analyzed through big data to accurately reconstruct your social network, behavioral patterns, and even asset scale. What does “x” truly mean in chat? It signifies all visualized data about you.

Session vs SimpleX Chat: Two Different Privacy Paths

The story of Session begins with resistance. Born in 2018, this project initially aimed to improve upon the Signal protocol. But when the development team (the Australian Oxen Privacy Tech Foundation) realized that Signal encrypts message content but cannot effectively protect metadata, they decided to build the “Session protocol” from scratch.

The key innovation: Session uses the Loki blockchain (later upgraded to its own Session Network) as the transport layer. Messages are no longer relayed through centralized servers but are forwarded via decentralized nodes. This means no single “black box” can see who you’re chatting with. By 2025, Session had fully migrated to its self-developed blockchain network and issued the SESH token. Notably, with Vitalik’s support, the SESH price once soared to around $0.3 before retracing to $0.1961.

SimpleX Chat took a different route. This open-source project adopts a radical design philosophy—“no user IDs at all”. No phone number, no email, not even a username. How does it work?

SimpleX employs a “one-way message queue” mechanism: the receiver creates an encrypted queue, and the sender delivers messages through this queue. The key point: the sender’s IP and session information are completely hidden from the recipient’s chosen server. It’s like a “blind mailbox” system—even if the server is hacked, it cannot trace the sender’s identity. Moreover, SimpleX is already considering security in the “post-quantum era,” designing protocols in advance to withstand future quantum computing threats.

Next year, SimpleX will introduce a “voucher” system—users will need to purchase vouchers and donate to the community to support server maintenance. This is an interesting incentive design: privacy is not a free lunch but a public good maintained collectively by the community.

Awakening of Privacy or Pseudo-Need?

Why has Vitalik’s endorsement caused a stir? Because it reflects the crypto community’s recognition of a larger trend: privacy is evolving from a niche demand into an infrastructure.

In April this year, Vitalik proposed an Ethereum privacy roadmap covering four dimensions: on-chain payment privacy, anonymous interactions, privacy reading, and network-level anonymity. In November, he released Kohaku at the Ethereum developer conference—a privacy tool for Ethereum wallets. These actions indicate that: privacy is no longer just a obsession of geeks but a strategic direction of the Ethereum ecosystem.

The appeal of Session and SimpleX lies in—they offer ordinary users an unprecedented choice. You no longer have to choose between “convenience” and “privacy.” These two apps demonstrate with real products that private communication is feasible.

The Next Big Narrative?

Currently, privacy messaging tracks are far less popular than AI or DeFi, but as global regulation tightens and data scandals occur frequently, this field is accumulating momentum. Vitalik and the Ethereum team’s focus is already a signal—more developers and capital are pouring in.

Zac Williamson, co-founder of Aztec Network, articulates the essence: “Our lives are increasingly dependent on digital spaces, and the level of surveillance in these spaces far exceeds the physical world. Privacy is not a luxury but the foundation for ensuring people can freely operate online without becoming monitored or sold as data commodities.”

If the first wave of Web3 was about decentralizing financial power, the second wave might be about reclaiming data sovereignty. Session, SimpleX Chat, and upcoming competitors are preparing for this redistribution. Privacy may truly become the keyword of the next era.