Session vs Threema
Side-by-side trajectory, velocity, and editorial themes.
Session shipped a protocol rewrite and a paid tier, then went publicly broke — the founder is asking users to bail it out.
Session is simultaneously in its most ambitious technical phase and an open funding crisis. Protocol V2 — re-implementing forward secrecy and layering post-quantum cryptography on top of Session's onion-routed transport — has been announced, and the Session Pro paid tier exited beta planning into a December development update. Then in March, cofounder Chris McCabe published a personal appeal saying the project cannot continue developing without user support, and the public feed has been quiet since.
The product roadmap that was meant to fund itself via Session Pro is colliding with the underlying problem the appeal makes plain: the Loki/Oxen-era token economics and donations aren't covering ongoing development. Protocol V2 and Pro are the bets that have to land for Session to remain viable; if Pro doesn't convert a meaningful share of the user base, the next twelve months are about scope reduction, not feature growth. The Feb 1 APT key rotation in January suggests the core infrastructure is still being maintained — for now.
Watch for either a hard Session Pro launch and conversion announcement, or a more explicit wind-down / handoff post. A long stretch of silence after a funding appeal usually resolves one way or the other within a quarter; the absence of any new posts since mid-March is itself a signal.
Threema leans on enterprise OnPrem features while sharpening its anti-WhatsApp, anti-Signal positioning.
Threema's recent activity splits between shipping and positioning. Concrete product work: a new in-app Survey Feed in the Threema Channel, the Liquid Glass iOS 7.1 redesign, DualLock for OnPrem chats on a lost or stolen device, and screenshot prevention in Threema Work for iOS. Most of the remainder is editorial — #DeleteWhatsAppDay, Zero Trust explainers, commentary on the politician-targeting Signal/WhatsApp attacks — aimed at sharpening the privacy positioning.
The growth story is increasingly the OnPrem and Work tiers. DualLock and anti-screenshot are explicitly enterprise security controls that put distance between Threema and consumer Signal. The publishing cadence around competitor incidents and privacy theory suggests Threema is courting decision-makers spooked by the recent Signal/WhatsApp narrative more than chasing consumer growth.
Expect more enterprise-shaped controls on OnPrem — finer admin policy, audit trails, additional device-loss safeguards — paired with continued public-positioning posts timed to competitor incidents. Consumer-side product investment looks deprioritised relative to the Work tier.
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