Techlore Talks The Messaging App With No User IDs (SimpleX Interview)
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Jan 24, 2026 Evgeny Poberezkin, founder of SimpleX Chat and privacy-focused protocol designer, builds a messaging network with no user identifiers. He explains unidirectional message pipes, how servers can be oblivious to users, comparisons to Signal and Session, scaling and usability tradeoffs, IP and metadata protections, and plans for redundancy, multi-device sync, and community-hosted operators.
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A Brutal Review That Changed Course
- Evgeny told how a Mozilla-introduced cryptographer bluntly critiqued their early crypto but praised the routing idea.
- That advice led SimpleX to adopt the Signal protocol and rewrite their crypto quickly.
Keep Tor Separate From App Core
- Don't embed transport networks like Tor into your app; instead let users route traffic via SOCKS proxies or Tor clients.
- Keep transport protection separate so users can obtain Tor code directly from Tor developers and reduce your maintenance burden.
Fix Onboarding And Invitation UX
- Simplify onboarding: make invite links short and preview the contact before connecting to reduce user confusion.
- Prioritize discovery paths because lack of searchable IDs makes joining SimpleX harder for non-technical users.