Leaving Session
2026-05-01
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I list a few methods of contact on the "About" page of my capsule. The one most people use is e-mail, which is fine with me. I used to list Session Messenger as a form of contact as well. Session^ is a decentralized messaging app and desktop application that uses an onion-routing network to hide IP addresses and maintains user privacy by avoiding external forms of identity like phone numbers. I've used Session for about a year and a half now, but as of yesterday, I've removed it from my preferred contact methods.
The Session Technology Foundation, the non-profit dedicated to developing Session, announced in April that the organization is rapidly running out of money. Though the protocol has over a million active monthly users and the team has been working to implement features like post-quantum cryptography, a lack of donations is putting pressure on the foundation. As of 2026-04-10, all the full-time staff have been furloughed, and if the funding goal is not met, critical infrastructure like the push-notification server and file storage server will go offline on 2026-07-08.
From my understanding, the Session network itself will still function after the shutdown thanks to third-party nodes. However, new development has already all but stopped and will officially cease if the foundation closes. Without their central servers, the service will also no longer be able to send push notifications (especially to iOS devices), and large file transfers will no longer work. If no-one else takes on development at that time, bugs and security vulnerabilities will go unfixed--a bad situation for a service that touts security and privacy.
STF is looking for a total of $1 million USD in donations within the next two months. At the time of writing, they've secured about $170000. If the goal is not met, they've promised to send all donations to the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
I'm not particularly bothered by the loss of push notifications; I never enable them on my apps if I don't have to anyway. Similarly, if large file storage goes down, I can use other services to send data. However, the loss of support and development is very concerning. In the meantime, I'd rather switch to platforms that are receiving active updates.
More annoying is that if I want to help provide infrastructure, I can't simply spin up a Session network node of my own and peer with others. Session is heavily integrated with Web3 and has its own cryptocurrency token $SESH. To run a node, an operator must stake at least 25000 SESH on Arbitrum One (an Ethereum L2 network); this is ostensibly a requirement to deter a malicious takeover of the Session ecosystem with a plurality of nodes. However, I'd need over a quarter of an Ether to pay for that many tokens, which at time of writing costs over $600 USD. Needless to say, I can't justify spending that kind of money to be a glorified relay for a chat app--much less one that is in danger of halting all development by summer's end.
Last night, I finally made the decision to switch to another service. I've settled on SimpleX^^ for now, which from what I can tell functions most similarly to Session.
Going forward, though, I'd like to try a service that has a little more reach. There are three I'm currently mulling: Delta Chat, Matrix, and an XMPP server. I know of all three and understand how their federation works, but I've never used any of them since they require signing up with an external service. I like fully-distributed systems, where every node on the work can work as a relay if it wishes, or at the very least no sign-ups are required. Delta Chat seems the most enticing, followed by XMPP, but I haven't made a final decision yet. Once I do, I'll add it as another mode of contact on my capsule.
If you use any of Matrix, XMPP or Delta Chat, I'd love to hear from you. Which do you use, and why? Have you used more than one of these services, and if so, how do they compare to each other? What programs and apps do you use to access them? What account providers do you recommend, or do you self-host?
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[Last updated: 2026-05-01]