Vitalik Buterin backs Signal’s move to drop the phone-number requirement

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin is back on the privacy wagon, with his latest post on X commending the “very welcome” news of Signal’s early work on letting people create accounts without listing a phone number.

Buterin, a known supporter of multiple privacy initiatives, has often thrown both his money and stature behind platforms and tools with a mandate to protect users’ content and the metadata around it.

Why is Buterin weighing in on a messaging app?

Buterin has been very vocal in his support for privacy. He has made it a priority also for Ethereum. 

In his April 2025 essay, “Why I support privacy,” Buterin stated that whoever holds information holds power, and that concentrated data collection has to be resisted in the digital realm where it is most practical to do so.

Buterin donated 128 ETH each to Signal and SimpleX Chat in November 2025. He praised both platforms for pushing open account creation and stronger metadata privacy. 

In that same round, he highlighted the same problem Signal is now trying to solve, noting that Sybil and denial-of-service resistance on the user side is harder to get right without leaning on phone numbers.

Do you need a phone number to register on Signal?

Right now, users cannot create a Signal account without submitting a phone number, which privacy proponents like Buterin have called out as a potential weakness in the privacy wall.

However, recent updates from AboutSignal.com, an independent site tracking the app, have reported commits to Signal’s server code that point to backend support for accounts that carry no phone number, covering registration security, account handling, and regional data. 

One commit showed that the two account types would stay separate. So a user could not add a number later or strip one from an existing account. For now, the option appears limited to new sign-ups.

In a talk recorded in March, Signal CTO Ehren Kret stated that the main reason the app does not yet offer phone-number-free registration is the need to stop bad actors from mass-creating accounts. 

Kret said, “We gotta figure out some way to induce a cost for signing up without a phone number.” That cost may or may not be monetary, and Kret said back in March that Signal hoped to ship some version of the feature later this year.

Buterin wants privacy on Ethereum too

Buterin has also been one of the biggest forces behind building privacy features directly into the Ethereum mainnet.

Those measures are focused on uncensorable private transactions, unlinkable account activity, and private blockchain reads. However, none of it is live yet.

Buterin’s Ethereum roadmap tries to stop observers from linking a user’s on-chain activity or wallet queries. Signal removing the phone number tackles the same class of problem from a different direction, which is cutting the identifier that ties an account to a real person.