Hacker News
Signal Is Landing Phone-Number-Free Registration, With Zero-Knowledge Proofs Validating Usernames Without Revealing Them
The Signal community thread tracking numberless accounts drew 322 points and 163 comments as the feature moved through Android betas 8.25 through 8.27, with commits from greyson-signal from August 25 scaffolding through a September 2 "Add basic ability to register numberless account" and September 9-10 payment-capability work. Signal staffer alex-signal confirmed the ZKP role: it verifies username character set and length without revealing the contents, reusing the same primitive already behind donation badges, backup payments and group membership. For builders this is a usable reference implementation of ZK-validated identity constraints in a shipping consumer app.
↳ Follow the thread