• 2019, https://matrix.org/
  • not the movie, but the “matrixed communication”
  • open standard: spec
  • non-profit Matrix.org Foundation
  • decentralized
  • end-to-end encryption
    • olm, megolm
    • based on Signal’s double ratchet
    • extended to support encrypted rooms
  • messaging (IM, rooms, bots, even IoT devices)
  • signaling (for WebRTC, VoiP, video calls)
  • bridging to other IM networks (XMPP, Slack, IRC, Discord, Facebook, …)
  • HTTPS+JSON based by default, but a much lighter UDP based demo was already created for ~100bps (!) networks

How does it work?⌗

  • “decentralized message store”
  • messages are replicated over all participating servers
  • no single point control or failure
  • more like e-mail than other IM protocols

Who uses it?⌗

  • lot of clients (web, desktop, mobile, even console), client SDKs
  • lot of bridges to other IM networks
  • more than one server implementations
  • free servers
  • easy to self-host, easy to join the federation
  • some numbers (matrix.org homeserver):
    • 10M+ accounts
    • 2.5M+ messages/day
    • 2.1M+ rooms
    • 20k+ federated servers
    • 400+ projects, 70+ companies building on Matrix
  • “big” users
    • French Goverment
    • German Ministry of Defense
    • Mozilla
    • Gitter (chat for GitLab projects)