The endorsement tracks Buterin’s privacy push, including 128 ETH donations each to Signal and SimpleX Chat and his May 2026 roadmap for native Ethereum privacy. 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. 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. Kret said, “We gotta figure out some way to induce a cost for signing up without a phone number.” Buterin wants privacy on Ethereum tooButerin has also been one of the biggest forces behind building privacy features directly into the Ethereum mainnet.