Indeed from outside STF seem like a pretty strong foundation with a plan lied out and everything, but the reality says a different story… Session is on life support
Session is asking for a community investment of 1million dollars, which i would say is alot considering the short period of time they have left, but not alot considering the size of operations that they have
the STF has received approximately $65,000 in donations. This is enough to maintain critical Session infrastructure for the next 90 days. We are extremely grateful for the support Session has received from the community, but unfortunately this is not sufficient to retain full-time developers. As a result, all paid staff and developers will have their final working day on April 9, 2026. After this date, some team members will continue on a primarily volunteer basis to help maintain Session until July 8, 2026.
If the fundraising is successful, the foundation would be able to continue active development of Session, including launching Session Pro and Session Protocol v2.
If it is unsuccessful, the lack of funding would mean the foundation is not able to support Session in any capacity and will need to be shut down. As a result, Session would be removed from the app stores, and critical infrastructure like the Session file server, push notification server and seed nodes will go offline.
Session plans to donate the rest of the money to the EFF in case this fundraising campaign turns out to be unsuccessful
We also want to assure you that if the STF is unable to secure funding sufficient enough to meet its goals within the next 90 days, any donations that cannot be used in accordance with the STF’s constitution will be publicly donated to the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
I don’t get why they need 2 senior executives and developers that charge 12,500 USD per month.
It’s strange to say the least.
Everyone wants a living wage. FOSS shouldn’t require people who work 9-5 to do 6-10 after their day job.
Also, I think 150k is probably a fair and comfortable wage now after adjusting for inflation. I’ll bet our grandparents that raised 6 kids on a factory workers salary while mom stayed home made the equivalent of $150k back in the day when adjusting for inflation and COL.
That said… this all feels very abrupt on their end and I can’t help but feel they messed up in financial planning for the project if they suddenly need to raise these funds this way and on short notice. Doesn’t feel like a lack of community support. It feels like poor management.
Wtf $150k a year for a developer is huge. Only in the US, maybe Switzerland, are those wages practiced.
In Europe you’ll get about half of that and that’s still a good wage. I hate the amount of out of touch devs who think getting paid 6-figures is normal.
Well, you see how well that works out, when the session system can’t even sustain itself due to the cost of labour lol.
You don’t have to do your development in silicon valley though. If they do it in Europe or even India it’ll be a lot cheaper
They aren’t in Silicon Valley. Seems they’re in Australia and Switzerland.
150K for a dev in Switzerland is a very high salary. 145K for a senior dev with architecture and product ownership, maybe, but a simple senior dev is usually more around 130K. I’m a dev working in Switzerland. Also even though Switzerland is small, there are important salaries differences between towns. That’s a high salary in Zurich, way too high for Neuchatel for example. Austria is cheaper.
[edit] Ooooooh forget what I said. I didn’t consider the amount was in USD and not CHF. 150K is actually 118K in CHF, which is a good salary don’t get me wrong, but not very high. Perfectly on par for a senior dev. Cost of life in Switzerland is VERY high.
Point 1: Your grandpa did not make 150k back then, adjusted for inflation or ppp adjusted inflation.
Point 2: 150k is a completely ridiculous amount, but for 2 people it represents 1/3 of the total pledge asked
This is batshit insane. Tell them to move to Poland or Portugal where you can live comfortably with 1/10th of that money.
15000€/year gross? In Portugal that’s slightly above minimum wage. Might be okay in the middle of the countryside. There should be plenty of skilled programmers racing to live there, right?
The cost of living in cities is quite inflated by digital nomads and wealthy retirees and is starting to be unaffordable for Portuguese.
Edit: 15000 USD is 12800 EUR, that’s a few cents an hour above minimum wage. And Poland costs already more than that BTW.
It’s not per year, it’s per month.
Can’t really anyone read? Poster above said Portugal or Poland cost 1/10th of the budget above.
And plainly no. In Poland you might get away with spending half.
The cost of living is inflated by retail speculation and landlords, not whatever you think is happening.
150000$/year, you left a zero out.
They were responding to the last bit:
Tell them to move to Poland or Portugal where you can live comfortably with 1/10th of that money.
Ok the 1/10th is a bit exaggerated. But it is far less than in the US.
WTF you’re talking about? 15k PER MONTH! Not per year! Read before writing multiple paragraphs of total crazy talk (well, it sounds like crazy talk with the right context.)
Read before writing multiple paragraphs of total crazy talk
This is ironic – you’re the one not to have read and understood the comment. Note the last line:
Tell them to move to Poland or Portugal where you can live comfortably with 1/10th of that money.
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I mean, there is also Signal
It’s infinitely harder to make anonymous one-off/throwaway Signal accounts, so they have different use cases for me. I have one phone number, so I only have one Signal account with my real name on it to talk to my friends and family. If I want to privately message someone who I’m not quite sure I can trust with my identity there’s no way in hell I’m giving them my Signal.
So is there a true open source chat program that requires no account (so full anonymity) and has good encryption for privacy?
DeltaChat and ArcaneChat (Fork)
According to the DC devs, it’s dirt cheap to run Chatmail servers :)
As someone not affiliated with Deltachat, but who runs a chatmail server, it is dirt cheap, can run on almost anything, and simple to set up.
Although, I do have 20 years of operations experience, so that last bit may just may be me.
I think SimpleX is the only one that fits that.
Sadly, the developers started crypto NFTish integrations last year. It is still too early to see if their use of it will end up being good or a slippery slope into crypto scams.
I’ve always been skeptical about session. Their old name was Loki Foundation and they ordered a CageCode in the US.
Pardon my ignorance, why would those be suspicious?
Yes, that requires some explanation. In a country like the United States, applying for public funding is essentially the same as working with government agencies. In the rest of the world, things are often different.
Maybe Session was doomed from the get go with such high expenses!
What happened to the 128 Ethereum Buterin donated to them back in November?
what’s the infrastructure tho? isnt it decentralized? i understand development costs if you want to have a paid team but maybe slow down development? i dont know, asking for a million bucks sounds like a bit too much
You can’t run a project with full time employees on the $65,000 they raised. But, I also wonder what the hell happened on their end that they suddenly need $1 million and didn’t have a plan to raise it sooner. I get that $1 million only supports like 5-6 employees for a year. I’m just questioning where the need for the money arose so suddenly and how they had initially funded themselves, but can’t anymore. Session is the right idea. We should have anonymous encrypted messaging apps. Signal doesn’t support anonymity like they do. I hope they can raise the funds and will contribute myself. I just hope they’re able to find a sustainable model.
Also SimpleX is pretty much a better version of session
