I understand why an 8 bit number would be used for counting... But that limitation makes no sense for WhatsApp user limit count. Presumably every user has an i

I understand why an 8 bit number would be used for counting... But that limitation makes no sense for WhatsApp user limit count. Presumably every user has an id number identifying them (maybe a long integer). You need to maintain a list of these users so your array is already way larger than 8 bits. Can someone intuit why the 256 limit in WhatsApp?