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.
This is our final appeal to the Session community: without your support, the STF will cease all operations on July 8, 2026.
We understand this may come as a shock. From the outside, Session appears to be a successful and growing app - with millions of downloads, strong app store ratings, and continued growth, recently surpassing 1.7 million monthly active users. However, Session's success has only been possible because of the dedicated contributors and teams who work tirelessly to improve it every day. These are highly skilled developers and architects of decentralized systems, and like everyone they have bills to pay, and families to feed.
Session is fortunate to have contributors who believe deeply in its mission and are willing to accept lower compensation than they could earn elsewhere. This helps reduce overall costs, but there is still a minimum level of funding required to operate. Even with a lean team, the STF estimates this cost to be approximately $1 million per year.
While this may seem like a large amount, it reflects the reality of building and maintaining secure, decentralized infrastructure. In most markets Senior developers often command salaries exceeding $150,000 USD per year, and on top of this there are legal and operational overheads for running the STF. Compared to its competitors, Session operates extremely efficiently, achieving its mission with a budget comparable to the combined compensation of just two senior executives at some larger messaging companies.
If you have already donated, we sincerely thank you. Every contribution helps bring Session closer to its funding goal.
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.
For now, volunteers will keep Session afloat for as long as possible. If you believe you can help Session before time runs out, please reach out to [email protected].
- The Session Technology Foundation & Session Team