Sounds good, and it could help fund signal without getting advertisers involved.

So you pay $5 on a credit card, which connects you to said handle, much like buying a SIM. How is that any better?

Someone in your social network joins signal next week, how would they find you?

I don't want my social network to find me. I will give them a handle if I do.

I know which of my coworkers use signal, despite them not telling me themselves. That seems wrong.

Buying things anonymously is a solvable problem. Gift cards, cash, etc. Let people resell your $5 sign up card.

Well signal is designed for secure communications for most people. Not designed for anonymous communication. So a key piece of that is easy to use, nice on boarding process, and being useful to new users in that first minute or two.

So the reason signal is so useful is because so many people use it, which depends on things like contacts showing up immediately when you join.

Seems like it's a common theme that people want a messaging client with a huge number of users, but don't want the features that made it popular in the first place.

Mullvad shows that it is possible to receive anonymous payments (eg by non refundable cash by mail)

Signal could use payments (eg via Monero) as spam prevention and revenue stream.

This would not damage any current feature/user

How do you pay them without revealing your identity?

Ask mullvad

Monero?

Good news, they are free

https://community.signalusers.org/t/usernames-in-signal/9157...

This is excellent news! Thanks for the link.