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In a blog post published on 28th December 2023, Ethereum Founder Vitalik Buterin recognised Waku as the successor of Whisper, the original peer-to-peer communications protocol for Ethereum.

10th January 2023, Switzerland The blog post from Vitalik Buterin 'Make Ethereum Cypherpunk Again', discusses the broader technological vision in which Ethereum exists and supports Waku as the realisation of the decentralised messaging protocol imagined by Gavin Wood.

Buterin wrote:

"In 2014, Gavin Wood introduced Ethereum as one of a suite of tools that can be built, the other being Whisper (decentralised messaging)... The former was heavily emphasised, but with the turn toward financialisation around 2017 the latter [was] unfortunately given much less love and attention. That said, Whisper continues to exist as Waku, and is being actively used by projects like the decentralised messenger Status."

While the Waku team originally forked the Whisper protocol in 2020 to continue its development, its scalability shortcomings quickly became apparent. In 2021, work on a complete protocol rewrite began. Waku introduced a relay protocol that implements pub/sub over libp2p. The team added further capabilities to make Waku more useful, including historic message retrieval for mostly offline devices, adaptive nodes to make participation more accessible to users with limited connections or lower-spec hardware, and privacy-preserving DOS protection protocols.

Waku Lead Franck Royer said on Buterin's comments:

"We are always thrilled when Vitalik recognises Waku as a continuation of Gavin Wood's web3 vision. It has been hugely important for us to build Waku in such a way that preserves the original cypherpunk values he acknowledged in his blog post, including permissionless participation, decentralisation, and censorship resistance."

Waku is a public good. Its protocols are blockchain agnostic and can be implemented on any web3, or even web2, app, and are already in use by Status, Railgun, and the Graph.

Waku was first announced as a core Logos project in June 2023 and powers the communication layer of the Logos technology stack.

Waku is an open-source, privacy-focused group of decentralised messaging protocols that allows accessibility on even resource-restricted devices. It empowers users to reclaim control over their data and communication, counteracting the global reach of technology giants and the centralised messaging applications we rely on.

Logos is working to build the technology required for the next generation of governing services, public goods, and social institutions. The grassroots movement behind Logos is committed to creating the first network state to bring citizens greater freedom, transparency, and stability through voluntary participation. Waku serves as the communication layer for the Logos technology stack.

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Original post:

Vitalik Buterin recognises Waku as the peer-to-peer communications layer of Gavin Wood's web3 vision - Cointelegraph