The only way you would know there is a blockchain involved is by reading the white paper or looking at the code. There are is no currency or token involved when using the app. I don't understand your last sentence at all.

I think session has some advantages over signal. Such as onion routing, not needing to interact with centralised servers, and not requiring a phone number.

How does Session differ from Briar?

Not who you're asking, on a technical aspect, briar is p2p so the recipient must be online in order to send them a message, there's no server to queue and send the message when the recipient comes online. This affects UX quite a bit as well.

While Signal is good for encrypting messages, you can't be sure Signal.org isn't hiding messages from you or otherwise blocking communication, and for Whatsapp, you can't view message history without keeping a backup file. This seems to solve both problems.

If the encryption is ever cracked now everyone can read everyone's messages though can they not? I know it feels unlikely to happen today, but tomorrow's technological breakthrough could make anything happen in a matter of months. The future is uncertain.

The encryption of the messages themselves is largely shared with every other part of cryptography - ed25519 keys are used almost exclusively over rsa for anything new and AES 256+ protects every single TLS connection. A lot of the internet hinges on the encryption used being resistant against known attacks.

https://safecurves.cr.yp.to/#:~:text=The%20following%20table...

There has been heavy development from the initial signal fork. In fact signals code has been completely gutted because using it for a decentralised messenger came with a lot of issues.

In this case the blockchain is used to incentivise the people running the routers. If you force them to stake funds then you ensure you have enough good actors to prevent bad actors from spying on your messages

My understanding is Matrix uses the same crypto algorithm as Signal but a completely different architecture to support federation and not require phone numbers.

How does Session compare to Matrix? Why another encrypted chat app that doesn't federate?

To be honest I don't have that great of an understanding of Matrixs implementation but they are also doing great work in the decentralised messenger space and its all helping!

My understanding for matrix is that a volunteer hosts a server which clients can connect to, and that server acts as router to other servers which will forward it onto the destination.

In sessions case the servers (Service nodes) are incentivised so they are not volunteers, and clients can connect to any of the service nodes. Messages get onion routed to a group of service nodes known as the users "swarm" and when a user wants to receive their messages they similarly request them from the swarm.

There are likely pros and cons of both implementations. Matrix you call federated where as session is decentralised, which is a fairly significant difference. Sessions infrastructure mitigates things like the federated servers knowing the IP address of the client, clients having to trust the first hop, and metadata leakage to the federated servers.

> Just reminding people that Session is nothing more than an implementation of signal with a blockchain behind it for some reason.

You do realise that Signal also has a blockchain / cryptocurrency project associated with it as well? [0] Which makes it no different to Session.

> I like blockchains, but I don't like when one is shoehorned in when it is unnecessary, and I'm especially wary when a project with very little original development includes blockchain stuff, scams abound.

Exactly. Just like how Signal is doing the same by also shoehorning another cryptocurrency called MobileCoin? [0] Which basically enables scammers, criminals and hitmen to encrypt and hide their payments and also use Signal for their illegal activities?

This is the road to hell with encrypted blockchains and private cryptocurrencies and what Signal is no different to Session.

[0] https://mobilecoin.com

[1] https://support.signal.org/hc/en-us/articles/360057625692-In...