[inthreedee]

> I am sceptical signal and whatsapp will *ever have a fully untethered protocol

It sounds like they may want to do this eventually, but it requires some significant re-engineering of how users are identified on the network. This is mentioned near the end of the article:

>That feature might someday even allow Signal to ditch its current system of identifying users based on their phone numbers—a feature that many privacy advocates have criticized, since it forces anyone who wants to be contacted via Signal to hand out a cell phone number, often to strangers. Instead, it could store persistent identities for users securely on its servers. "I’ll just say, this is something we’re thinking about," says Marlinspike. Secure value recovery, he says, "would be the first step in resolving that."