Vitalik Buterin: Signal exploration does not require phone number registration, true privacy requires message by message and cannot be associated

Vitalik Buterin stated that Signal's exploration of not requiring phone number registration can help reduce reliance on the phone number system, lower the risk of SIM card swapping, and increase the difficulty of government bans. Vitalik Buterin pointed out that this measure has not yet achieved true anonymity, and message metadata can still be used for identity association. He believes that the only defensible form of privacy is message by message unlinkability, which is being explored by projects such as Session and SimpleX. The next focus is on preventing spam and denial of service attacks.