Vitalik Buterin recently sent a 256 ETH grant to two messaging projects, Session and SimpleX Chat, without the usual ecosystem fanfare.
The gesture was modest in size but its intention was precise, because both applications occupy a part of the Internet that rarely gets real support: metadata-resistant communication.
Their designs address the parts of digital messaging that encryption alone cannot protect, the structural details that reveal who is speaking, how often, and on which networks.
Buterin’s gift calls attention to this area with unusual clarity, highlighting two projects designed to reduce the information that modern platforms routinely disseminate by default.
Session and SimpleX do not build on Ethereum, use blockchain-linked accounts, or integrate with any on-chain system. These are stand-alone pieces of privacy engineering. What Buterin has funded, based on what is publicly documented, is simply the development of two messaging systems built around more robust defaults.
It’s this narrow scope that makes the donation worthwhile, as both of these projects approach privacy from angles that most consumer applications avoid: routing design and identity design.
The two apps that actually received funding
Session: a metadata-enhanced routing system built around onion paths and pseudonymous keys
Session’s white paper describes an email network structured around public-key identities and a relay system designed to obfuscate the relationship between sender and recipient. Each user is represented by a pair of keys rather than a phone number or email address, and each message travels through a multi-hop onion routing path that spreads awareness across multiple nodes so that no relayer can observe both ends of a conversation.
To further reduce exposure, messages are stored among decentralized clusters of nodes called “swarms,” which temporarily keep messages encrypted so that users do not need to be online at the same time. Swarms store ciphertext without knowing what it contains, and the routing layer intentionally fragments the information available to each relay.
The network also incorporates a staking requirement for node operators, a Sybil resistance measure that increases the cost of creating large fleets of malicious relays. The protocol described in the white paper emphasizes metadata as a top-tier privacy risk, framing its routing and storage choices around limiting what intermediaries can learn. The effect is a system in which communication leaves a significantly smaller observable footprint than conventional centralized messaging, even when content encryption is taken for granted.
SimpleX: an email model that completely avoids user IDs
SimpleX takes a different approach, documented in its protocol specification: instead of trying to hide metadata behind complex routing, it minimizes metadata by completely eliminating persistent user identifiers. The network does not assign usernames, numbers, or any form of stable identification. Users connect via unique invitations or QR codes, and each relationship is managed as its own cryptographic channel with unique keys, isolated from all others.
Messages are relayed through SimpleX servers which act as transport mechanisms rather than identity centers. Servers see the packets but lack any information linking them to a user or conversation graph. All status (contacts, channels and message history) is stored locally on the user’s device. Relationship discovery occurs between endpoints, not on a server.
Because the protocol has no overarching notion of identity, the usual metadata surfaces evaporate. There is nothing for a server to correlate, nothing for a server to harvest, and nothing that reveals the structure of a user’s social network. Where Session builds a hardened routing pipeline, SimpleX creates a communication model in which the network has almost nothing to observe in the first place.
Together, these designs represent two interpretations of privacy engineering, based on the specifics of each protocol rather than marketing slogans.
Why this grant matters, even with its limited scope
The size of the donation is much smaller than most crypto funding rounds, but the signal it sends is clearer than many larger initiatives. Communication tools occupy a strange position in digital infrastructure: everyone relies on them, but most applications treat privacy as a layer that can be added later, rather than a property that must be designed from the ground up. Session’s routing design and SimpleX’s identifierless model both start from the opposite end of the spectrum.
The Ethereum ecosystem has spent years grappling with questions related to privacy, scalability, and user experience, but blockchains are inherently incapable of protecting communication patterns. The default behavior of global broadcasting doesn’t translate well to private conversations, nor is it supposed to. Messaging systems designed for privacy need to be designed around a different set of threats, which is exactly what these two projects do.
By directing funds to these two projects, Buterin recognizes that private communication is a prerequisite for a healthier Internet, even if that communication takes place entirely outside of Ethereum. Nothing in the white papers or repositories suggests integration with wallets, smart contracts or decentralized applications: the protocols are self-contained. But privacy tools don’t need to be blockchain native to be important to a blockchain ecosystem, because users who interact with on-chain systems still live most of their digital lives off-chain.
The donation comes during a quieter phase of the market, when the absence of hype makes it easier to see which parts of the digital infrastructure deserve attention. These applications are open source, rely on volunteer-distributed or community-managed infrastructure, and directly benefit from marginal increases in funding, making a relatively modest grant meaningful.
Privacy as an architectural starting point
Vitalik Buterin’s 256 ETH donation does not describe the future of Ethereum, and it is not a roadmap to on-chain privacy. It highlights two systems that take privacy seriously at the protocol level, each addressing a different aspect of the metadata problem that dominates modern communication. The session focuses on reducing what routing nodes can infer, while SimpleX avoids creating identifiers that can be inferred in the first place.
These approaches are based on their respective white papers and are real-world examples of what privacy engineering looks like when it starts at the base layer rather than as an optional feature. If the future of the Internet requires stronger guarantees about who sees what and when, these are the types of systems that will need to be supported, even if they never touch a blockchain.
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