⚡️💬🔒 NEW - Vitalik Buterin donates 128 ETH each to Session and SimpleXChat in support of encrypted messaging apps advancing permissionless accounts and metadata privacy.
Signal was never private from the start for those who know how it was conceived and was being funded by the US gov for years with millions of USD per year. Yet, it is recommended by Vitalik.
SimpleX is another Telegram from 10 years ago. Russian developers, US-funding, assuming itself as open source but using very obscure programming languages. 99% of users will download the compiled binary and use the "free" servers from a VC-backed company. Good luck trusting your binary can be trusted, because for sure as heck you won't be able to verify it can really be trusted.
In the meanwhile there are options like 0xChat which use NOSTR underneath, can switch between hundreds of volunteer relays available today and the communication protocol is simple enough to be safely used by other clients.
Those get zero attention, much less financial support.
We can't rely on people from the system to fund tools outside of it.