What a crazy start to the year it has been. It’s already feeling like 2024 will be one of those years that is jam-packed full of hard work, fast fun, and major milestones. After ringing in the new year, we got straight to work on sending Session Token into the world — we’ve got progress on the tech side, we’ve got progress on the brand side, and overall we’ve got a hell of an update for you.
This update is coming in a few days late, because there were a few more announcements we needed to drop before we could cover them in here. Let’s jump straight into it.
Launching on Arbitrum 💙
Session Token is starting to get real — really real. This month we announced we are launching on Arbitrum. We went through quite a process to figure out where we’d launch Session Token, considering multiple Layer2 solutions as well as the viability of launching directly on Ethereum. Due to the way the node network functions, a Layer2 solution made the most sense for Session Nodes.
Arbitrum was one of the leading candidates from the very beginning, with a proven track record of stability, security, and performance. It seemed like a natural home for Session Token, and after some discussions with the folks at Arbitrum Foundation, Arbitrum came out on top.
We have received a grant from the Arbitrum Foundation as a part of launching on Arbitrum One, and we are eager for Session to be a part of the Arbitrum ecosystem.
We’re excited to work with people in the Arbitrum community to make sure that Session is a must-use tool for every Arbinaut, so if you know any die-hard fans of Arbitrum (or you’re one yourself) — get in touch with us!
My contract is wicked smaht 📄
Before the Arbitrum announcement, this was probably the biggest release about Session Token so far. But things move fast in crypto, don’t they? We were very close to releasing the first version of Session Token’s rewards contract late last year, but we ended up pushing it into the new year to make a few tweaks.
It’s out in the world now, and ready for third-party auditors and enthusiasts to comb through the code. Seeing as this is such an important mechanism for the network, we’ll obviously be putting in the resources to have this contract audited by the pros, but we encourage anyone and everyone that’s interested to take a look themselves.
This announcement post has everything you need to know!
Welcome to the world wide web 🏄
The website you are using to read this update didn’t exist a month ago. 🤯 Okay, so this isn’t the fully-fledged website that we designed last year — not yet. However, this Coming Soon site is Session Token’s first mark on the internet. It’s a temporary site while we get all the bells and whistles built in the background, but we are really happy with the look and feel of the site so far.
This interim site is significant because we can start building SEO here, provide Session Token updates from its own site (like this one), and it just makes Session Token feel a lot more…real. You can see it, feel it, and chew on it. We are continuing to work on the full website, and you can expect more updates on that progress next month.
For now, Lab Updates and any other major Session Token updates will be hosted right here, at https://token.getsession.org.
Update required🍴
Can you smell that? Ah, yes, my favourite time of year. Mandatory Service Node Upgrade Period. There’s nothing quite like it!
Last week we released a new Mandatory Service Node Upgrade which brings important changes at the Service Node layer which are required for the improved version of Groups in Session. The mandatory upgrade period will be ending on February 20, so make sure you have your nodes upgraded by then.
This is an important milestone for the Groups rebuild, which is getting closer to completion on the Session side of things, too. Android and Desktop teams are nearing completion of Chunk 2 in the build process, which includes invites and user management. Godspeed, Session devs. 🫡
Mi casa, su casa 🏡
Where do you go if you want to keep in touch with everything Session Token? The community hubs, of course! This month we launched our X/Twitter account and our Official Discord Community.
These channels are only just getting started, and were literally released in the last few days. If you’ve been keeping track of these updates, you probably know that we spent quite a bit of time trying to make sure these community channels would be inviting and engaging places for our Session Token community.
If you are interested in Session Token, want a chance to chat to the team, or want to connect with other Session Token fans — this is the place for you. We will be running some competitions and other initiatives to help build numbers and engagement in these communities over the next month or so, so keep an eye out! 🎉
Data Privacy Week 2024 📅
As privacy defenders, we have always been champions of Data Privacy Week. Actually, there are a few different ‘Data Privacy Weeks’ organised by various groups, but to us that just means more privacy celebrations!
This Data Privacy Week, we produced a content series that was focused on exposing data privacy myths. Cam put on his best Adam Savage impression in the Busting Privacy Myths video, and we also had a series of related graphics posted to our social media channels.
Overall, the content performed really well, with all the posts surpassing the 100 like threshold on X/Twitter, including 1 over 200 and another over 300.
This is well above average for the account, and the consistently high performance of all the posts shows genuine interest in this kind of content — so you can expect more like this in the future.
On top of this, we also paired up our Swiss buddies, Threema, to help promote their own DPW venture, as they supported the creation of a new interactive website that guides you through some privacy tips and recommendations. You can check out the website here.
Now you see me, now you don’t 🪄
Disappearing messages are closer than ever. They are now in internal testing on iOS and Desktop, and Android is closing in on its (likely) final round of QA. Once these boxes are ticked and Android goes through internal testing, we will be ready for the long awaited cross-platform release. Nice.
Some other development progress going on behind the scenes includes changes to the storage server which allow us to connect using QUIC as well as HTTP — resolving some Apple-specific issues; encryption logic is now replicated in libSession, so soon we’ll get started on transitioning out platform-specific code for libSession code.
That’s all for the month of January! It was a slightly shortened month, but there is still so much going on. February is set to be another humdinger, with the disappearing messages release likely to drop, more community building initiatives for Session Token, and plenty more! See you soon.