How on earth does SimpleX afford a 1GB file size limit?

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Signal and WhatsApp are roughly 50-100mb, so how does a company with far less financial backing afford 1GB?

I feel they should lean into this more as a USP, it’s worthwhile to use just based on that.

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File contents are not typically stored permanently in an XFTP relay according to SimpleX’s own overview of hosting one: https://simplex.chat/docs/xftp-server.html

The default seems to be only to hold for at most 48 hours before deleting them or until they get deleted by the client(s), whichever comes first.

The whitepaper describing XFTP as a protocol also shows that files are typically divided up into fixed chunks based on the file’s size. Those chunks either being 64KB, 256KB, 1MB and/or 4MB packets exchanged and split over multiple relays: simplexmq/protocol/xftp.md at 27a37387be98d9c7ec0e62373e125539675d0095 · simplex-chat/simplexmq · GitHub

Also, SimpleX does have financial backing that would likely be sufficient enough to facilitate this kind of infrastructure, especially if file storage is ephemeral within the relays. Now, honestly, they are not really good at being upfront and center on their homepage on finding or presenting this information, but you can locate some sources regarding their seed and VC investments. They also have an Open Collective page and Github Sponsors information that piece together the rest of the funds they receive. Though, beyond those seeds and recurring donations, they are also raising funds so far through Wefunder.

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Thank you for such a great answer.

Regarding this, I believe this is the same for Signal? They only store content as a relay, for as long as it takes for the client to receive the data.

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