The Session Technology Foundation (STF) announced it has entered a 90‑day shutdown window unless it reaches a new funding target. To keep critical servers running, STF has already collected roughly $65,000 in donations, enough for the next three months but insufficient to pay its salaried engineers. All paid staff will depart on April 9, 2026, and hopes the community can close the gap.

Session’s user base continues to expand, now topping 1.7 million monthly active users and ranking high in app‑store ratings. Despite this growth, the platform’s decentralized architecture demands a yearly budget of about $1 million, covering senior developer salaries that can exceed $150,000 and necessary legal overhead. The foundation claims this cost is comparable to the compensation of just two senior executives at larger rivals.

Volunteer contributors will keep the service alive until July 8, 2026, but any shortfall beyond that will trigger a full shutdown. Unused donations will be transferred to the Electronic Frontier Foundation per STF’s constitution. The plea underscores how even popular privacy‑focused tools rely on steady financial backing to sustain development and infrastructure to preserve the open‑source ethos that drives the project.