This release is one of the most important in Status’ history. The change log is small, but significant. Today we’re rolling out new mailservers that use our fork of the Whisper messaging protocol, known as Waku.
Waku mailservers prevent Status from using excessive mobile bandwidth. With Waku, Status can support 10 times as many users as with Whisper servers alone.
Regular Whisper mailservers use topic-based filters to surface only the chats that you want to see, but your device still receives all messages sent over the network. Filtration happens after the fact.
To save on resources, Waku mailservers simply tell other nodes in the network which topics your device would like to receive content for, filtering before the messages reach your device.
Heavy message traffic can be incredibly resource intensive, depending on how many topics you follow. For a heavy user, the difference can amount to several hundred kilobytes of data per minute.
There is a potential privacy tradeoff in making your followed topics apparent to other nodes—it is easier to know if a given IP address belongs to a certain chat.
In v1.2, we offer the legacy Whisper servers as an option under Advanced settings. You can disable Waku by toggling Waku enabled. Waku mailservers talk to existing mailservers without any disruption.
With further improvements to Waku in the pipeline, Status becomes accessible to even more users and can deliver peer-to-peer messaging without draining unnecessary data.
Update in the App or Playstore if you do not have auto updates enabled.
Changed
- Waku mailservers
- Updating wallet fiat prices even more frequently (awaiting clarification)
Fixed
- App crashing when webview is closed
- Messages not showing when received while on a different tab
- Token balances displayed as 0 after relogin
