Inside Vitalik’s 256 ETH grants: When Ethereum falls, privacy rises

Vitalik Buterin recently provided a 256 ETH grant to two messaging projects, Session and SimpleX Chat, focusing on metadata-resistant communication, an area often neglected in mainstream support. These applications are standalone privacy engineering projects, not relying on Ethereum or on-chain systems, but built around stronger defaults for digital messaging.

Session employs a metadata-hardened routing system using onion paths and pseudonymous keys, where messages travel through multiple relays, obscuring the sender-recipient relationship. It uses decentralized 'swarms' for temporary, encrypted message storage. SimpleX Chat takes a different approach by minimizing metadata entirely through eliminating persistent user identifiers; relationships are established via one-time invitations, and servers only act as transport mechanisms without linking packets to users or conversations.

Although the grant size is small, it signals the importance of foundational privacy engineering, as blockchains are inherently poor at protecting communication patterns. Buterin's support acknowledges that private communication is crucial for a healthier internet, even when it occurs entirely off-chain, highlighting Session's routing focus and SimpleX's identifier-free model as concrete examples of privacy built in from the protocol level.

(Source：CryptoSlate)