Session says it could shut down by July 8 without funding, as users press for transparency

Privacy messaging app Session has warned users it will shut down on July 8, 2026 if it cannot raise $1 million in the next 90 days. All paid staff and developers were let go on April 9, leaving the app to run on volunteers.

The Session Technology Foundation said in an official post that it has raised roughly $65,000 so far, enough to keep core infrastructure running until July 8 but not enough to pay anyone.

A fundraising tracker on its website showed $72,000 raised at the time of this writing. The $1 million target is tied to completing Protocol v2, which was set to bring post-quantum encryption and secure device management, and a Pro tier designed to make the project self-sustaining.

“For now, further development has been paused, so new features will not be released and emerging or existing bugs may not be immediately fixed,” the foundation wrote. “Most likely, there will be no new releases during this period.”

Session has 1.7 million monthly active users and has been operating for 8 years.

The announcement quickly drew questions about Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin’s 128 ETH donation to Session in November 2025, worth around $382,000 at the time. Session has not publicly accounted for how those funds were spent. In the replies to its official post, users asked the foundation to “explain how you burn $100K per month.” One user on X estimated that Session had burned close to $3 million over the past 18 months.

The company, however, has not responded to any of these comments at the moment.

Officially, though, the foundation said its lean team still costs around $1 million per year, citing senior developer salaries and legal and operational overhead. It also confirmed that any leftover donations it cannot legally spend if the project folds will be transferred to the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Dark Web Informer first highlighted the in-app shutdown notice yesterday, and the post pulled in over 64,000 views.

Anyone who believes they can help before the deadline is asked to reach out at [email protected].

We stand out from the tech-media crowd because we break news stories; we mainly bring you stuff that you won’t find anywhere in the mainstream tech media. Our stories have been picked up by some of the world’s most popular websites and media outlets—more info is available here.