Keybase got acquihired, which is a much better outcome for both founders and investors than that which befalls most startups that never invent a viable revenue model.
Don’t shed any tears for anyone making hundreds of thousands of dollars per year while a third of the US has approximately zero income.
I'm certainly sad to see a company that took security seriously and "did it right" being bought by a company that arguably did not and got large mostly by trading security for convenience, even going as far as saying they were E2EE when they were actually not [1].
How do you compete with that?
Most users don't care about security/privacy and maybe that's fine but it was nice to see a company that seemed to genuinely care about these things.
Not touching for a moment whether or not Keybase “did it right”, but, very simply: without a good revenue model, their only other option was to eventually go out of business. They were default-dead, near as I can tell from outside looking in.
You can do all the open source e2e crypto trendiness you like, but unless you’re a nonprofit like Signal that can generate a stream of donations, if you don’t eventually get people to pay you for the service, you’re not going to be able to stick around.
This was the best possible outcome for them, given the circumstances.
Don’t shed any tears for anyone making hundreds of thousands of dollars per year while a third of the US has approximately zero income.