Vlad Gluhovsky was the primary developer of Whisper, the decentralized messaging protocol that formed part of the original Holy Trinity of Web3 alongside Ethereum (computation) and Swarm (storage).
Working on Whisper from 2015, Vlad developed the protocol through several major versions:
- Whisper v2 - Early implementation in Geth
- Whisper v5 - Major revision with improved efficiency
- Whisper v6 - Final version before deprecation
The protocol was designed for "dark, ephemeral communication" - messages could not be traced to their origin, were not permanently stored, and provided plausible deniability. This privacy-focused approach used a flooding mechanism where nodes received many messages they couldn't decrypt, providing cover traffic that obscured communication patterns.
Vlad presented "Whisper: Achieving Darkness" at Devcon 3 in Cancún (November 2017) with Guillaume Ballet, explaining the protocol's privacy properties and technical architecture:
Whisper was eventually deprecated and removed from Geth. Its spiritual successor is Waku, developed by Status, which builds on Whisper's design principles while addressing its scalability limitations.
Back-links
Other pages that reference this:
- Geth (Articles)
- Whisper (Articles, May 01, 2014)
- Swarm (Articles, November 01, 2014)
- Guillaume Ballet (People)