this post was submitted on 09 Apr 2026
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We had hoped this day would never come, but Session has now entered its final 90 days of operation. If we are unable to reach our funding goal within this period, the Session Technology Foundation (STF) will be forced to shut down.

To date, 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.

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[–] onlinepersona@programming.dev 30 points 2 days ago (3 children)

In most markets Senior developers often command salaries exceeding $150,000 USD per year

Uh... That sounds like a US thing, honestly. Which developers in Europe or Asia earn that kind of money?

[–] FatherPeanut@pawb.social 10 points 2 days ago (2 children)

In the US, that tracks with a higher-end salary. Call it an impulse thought, but I have a slight feeling that Silicon Valley has something to do with that.

[–] iopq@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Higher end? You must not have been passing attention to the developer salaries in AI. $150,000 is median developer salary in SF bay area. You really need $100,000 just to support your family here

Higher end is seven figures

[–] FatherPeanut@pawb.social 2 points 1 day ago

I mean, that's where Silicon Valley is, so yeah.

[–] prettybunnys@piefed.social 9 points 2 days ago (3 children)

Senior developers at places like Amazon can easily Make 300+

Depends what field you’re in.

In the gov/defense world 150k+ is a mid career engineer.

Salaries vary by the field and saturation of talent in that field.

The niches still command the riches

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[–] trewq@lemmy.world 8 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Asia? That salary? Dream on

[–] onlinepersona@programming.dev 9 points 2 days ago (4 children)

Exactly! 150k is definitely not normal, not even in Europe.

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[–] HubertManne@piefed.social 3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

In any major city in the us its kinda hard to get by with 5 figures nowadays and impossible in the worst cost of living ones. I know that I have to make something like 90k to be in the black in order to have enough after taxes.

[–] iopq@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Yeah, shudder to think how you would live on $50,000 in SF. That's definitely three roommates territory

[–] HubertManne@piefed.social 2 points 1 day ago

oh yeah but im more thinking having a family and covering all medical costs. One of my biggest problems is im single income with a sick spouse and our country simply does not effectively work for that anymore but its simply a scenario that is always going to exist so either our social safety nets need to get waaaaayyyyyyyyy better or we need to pay waaaaayyyy higher.

[–] HelloRoot@lemy.lol 25 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (2 children)

Sounds like bad planning. There are like 3 other e2ee messengers that are open source and have enough funding to operate for years without doing appeal-to-emotion dona-... extortion campaigns

[–] warm@kbin.earth 6 points 2 days ago

It's a scam, they don't even refund donations if they don't make the target. Why are their operating costs so high? This is such a red-flag, they need to shutdown regardless.

[–] voxel@feddit.uk 6 points 2 days ago (5 children)
[–] lookingforanALFpolycule@lemmy.world 10 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Their top 6 earners all get more than half a million per year and all of their infrastructure is hosted on Amazon and Google servers so it’s not really “signal” that’s expensive.

[–] voxel@feddit.uk 5 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Infrastructure can't be run on thin air, Signal isn't peer to peer, so infrastructure is essential.

[–] lookingforanALFpolycule@lemmy.world 4 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Oh yea not denying that they need servers. But do they really need to rent them from Google and Amazon instead of hosting their own? Seems like pretty poor use of donations.

[–] voxel@feddit.uk 5 points 2 days ago (1 children)

They talk about it in their blog post which I have linked, go read it.

[–] tyler@programming.dev 2 points 23 hours ago

I’m not who you are talking to originally, but as lot of that is just kinda nonsense. They say they can’t have their own servers in DCs around the world cause it would cost too much…. But it wouldn’t, that’s just incorrect. They’re clearly spending 1.3 million on s3 data and the short file lifetime is killing them. If they just bought drive capacity and hosted on VPSes around the world they’d likely have a much much smaller bill. Yeah it sounds scary, but they’re already doing scary stuff.

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[–] jay@mbin.zerojay.com 13 points 2 days ago

Knew Session was in trouble as soon as they introduced some sort of Session token stuff into the instant messenger app, which made zero sense.

[–] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 10 points 2 days ago
[–] tal@lemmy.today 19 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (4 children)

For those who, like myself, have never heard of Session prior to now:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Session_(software)

Session is an Australian, currently Switzerland-based, cross-platform end-to-end encrypted instant messaging application emphasizing user confidentiality and anonymity. Developed and maintained by the non-profit The Session Technology Foundation,[3] it employs a blockchain-based decentralized network for transmission. Users can send one-to-one and group messages, including various media types such as files, voice notes, images, and videos.[4]

Session provides applications for various platforms, such as macOS, Windows, and Linux, along with mobile clients available on both iOS and Android.

[–] solrize@lemmy.ml 13 points 2 days ago (8 children)

blockchain

Ok I still don't know what this program does that's interesting, but it sounds like another thing we don't need.

[–] tal@lemmy.today 8 points 2 days ago

Without looking at the protocol at all, I generally think that blockchain stuff is a solution in search of a problem, but distributed storage might be used to make the system resistant to traffic analysis, the way Hyphanet does.

looks at GitHub repo

Session Router (formerly Lokinet) is an onion routing IP network built on Session Service Nodes

If it's doing onion routing, then it probably is intended to be resistant to traffic analysis.

[–] x00z@lemmy.world 5 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (5 children)

The idea is decent in theory, but not in execution. The idea is that token staking is done by node operators which makes it much harder to pull of 51% attacks as it requires hundreds of euros in money to be put aside. It also protects against poisoned nodes, which is theoretically possible on something like Tor because of how easy it is to spin those up for cheap. Besides that the token also funnels a tiny amount back towards the developers in an anonymous way that would help them during development.

In practice though they should have just went without the blockchain. I have been very interested in Session but their blockchain model was always one of the biggest things that might kill the whole project.

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[–] TacticalToothbrush@discuss.tchncs.de 3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

ping @iopq@lemmy.world and other mod.

New archive snapshot is up. Should I swap the donation link to archive link?

[–] iopq@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago

It's really up to you

[–] scott@lem.free.as 7 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Another reason why centralised communication is a bad idea.

[–] voxel@feddit.uk 7 points 2 days ago (1 children)
[–] amzd@lemmy.world 13 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (2 children)

Then it should be fine even without the org?

Edit: It will not be fine without the org, so the "decentralized" claim is a bit of a stretch. From their FAQ:

[...] 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.

[–] voxel@feddit.uk 6 points 2 days ago (3 children)

It's not a stretch. Session is as decentralized as the Tor network. But just as with Tor, it has centralized people who manage the decentralized nodes and develope the software for them and the network.

[–] Luminous5481@anarchist.nexus 4 points 2 days ago (2 children)

it has centralized people who manage the decentralized nodes

so it's not decentralized then. if one centralized group has to be around to control things or the whole network goes down, that's not decentralized. that's literally the exact opposite of the definition of the word decentralized.

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[–] foudinfo@jlai.lu 6 points 2 days ago (2 children)

65.000$ for 90 days ?!

I could run my servers for decades with this kind of money...

[–] artyom@piefed.social 8 points 2 days ago (1 children)

How many thousand users does your server have?

[–] foudinfo@jlai.lu 4 points 2 days ago

Only one to be honest 😅

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