Vitalik Buterin donates 256 ETH to privacy‑focused messengers
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has announced a new major donation in support of digital privacy tools. He sent 128 ETH each to two encrypted messengers, Session and SimpleX Chat. At current prices, the total value of the donation exceeds $760,000.
In a post on X, Buterin reminded his followers that encrypted messengers like Signal help people keep a personal space online. In his view, the next step for the industry is to make account creation genuinely permissionless and to protect not only message content but also metadata — who is talking to whom and when. This, he says, is exactly what Session and SimpleX are working on, so he encouraged people not only to follow the projects but also to install the apps and try them out.
Both messengers are built around abandoning familiar identifiers. Session does not ask for a phone number and does not rely on central servers, while SimpleX avoids assigning users a permanent ID and cuts down the traces they leave on the network. The teams focus on decentralized architecture and message-routing models that make it hard for any provider to build a full picture of user communications.
The donation fits into Buterin’s broader stance. In a recent discussion with Peter Thiel, he criticized the idea of blanket surveillance and pointed back to the cypherpunk roots of the crypto movement, where privacy and distributed power matter more than control by large intermediaries.
Earlier, Vitalik also wrote about how technologies such as zero-knowledge proofs could protect people whose work involves public responsibility. In one of his essays, he suggested temporarily shielding judges’ identities and using cryptography to prove that their decisions follow the rules, reducing the risk of pressure and threats in the real world.
The story of Session and SimpleX shows that, for Buterin, communication privacy is not just a talking point. It is an area where he is ready to put real money and reputation on the line. His latest donation gives extra momentum to projects that want secure messaging to feel as simple and accessible as mainstream chat apps, not as a niche tool only for tech insiders.
Read more about secure communication channels in our piece Beyond Telegram: Exploring Secure Messaging Alternatives
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