Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has publicly endorsed Signal’s ongoing effort to allow account creation without linking a phone number, calling it “very welcome news.” In a post on X (formerly Twitter), Buterin highlighted the benefits: reduced dependence on telecom operators, lower susceptibility to SIM-swap attacks, and a greater barrier against government pressure to geo-restrict users.
However, Buterin was careful to note that this measure alone does not solve digital privacy’s deeper structural problems. He stressed that pseudonymous identities remain vulnerable to metadata analysis and advanced AI tools, which can correlate digital activity with real-world identities. The Ethereum founder argued that the only robust standard is “message-by-message unlinkability,” ensuring that third parties cannot determine who is communicating with whom.
Buterin’s comments are rooted in his long-standing advocacy for privacy. In April 2025, he penned an essay titled “Why I support privacy,” declaring that concentrated data collection must be resisted. By November 2025, he had donated 128 ETH each to Signal and SimpleX Chat, praising both for pushing open account creation and stronger metadata protections. At that time, he already identified the challenge of Sybil and denial-of-service resistance without phone numbers—the very problem Signal is now addressing.
Currently, Signal still requires a phone number for registration. Independent tracker AboutSignal.com has spotted server-side commits that support no-number accounts, covering registration security and regional data, but the two account types will remain separate. Signal CTO Ehren Kret confirmed in March that the main obstacle is implementing a cost mechanism to deter mass-account creation, with a feature shipment planned later this year.
Buterin’s praise for Signal parallels his own work on Ethereum’s privacy roadmap, which aims to enable uncensorable transactions, unlinkable account activity, and private blockchain reads. Both remove the identifier that ties an account to a real person, tackling privacy from complementary directions.
