Someone should make a hard fork in the Matrix network and Protocol
one that is intentionally and fundamentally incompatible to the existing Matrix network, and makes drastically different decisions in governance, software and protocol design, has different priorities and more.
Not out of malice, but because the current Matrix ecosystem is unsustainable.
In the Foundation's attempt to become more independent, they've given control over Synapse – The most feature-complete, most widely deployed, and only long-standing Matrix Home-server Implementation – over to Element and ended up making the entire Matrix ecosystem dependent on a for-profit, VC-funded company that does not care for core issues in the process. The way that other projects like Dendrite have faded away (and also been given to Element!), or how Conduit's development cycle is incredibly slow does not inspire confidence in other projects either.
To that comes the fact that many parts of the Matrix protocol are due not just fixing, but entire re-structuring to keep with the times. The server-to-server parts of Matrix have major issues especially in regards to state resolution and resistance to malicious federation. Not only is it almost impossible to defend a room (or letalone a whole set of them) against spam and abuse, there is also an attack vector in breaking federation in a room altogether that is being abused in places like #main:postmarketos.org
As it stands right now, I do not see the mainline Matrix.org Foundation fixing any of these issues. Not just because of them being closely adjacent to Element still, but also due to a lack of funding; Even if the Matrix Foundation was truly more independent by now, they would still lack funding required to do their work, and to do it well.
As such, I express my wish for a hard fork of the Matrix protocol. It should be lead by those who truly care about the core of the protocol, trust and safety and user-experience first; Not by who is funding a certain feature in Element; Not by the needs of B2B customers, all of which are mostly unaffected by these core issues that the core community has suffered from over the past few years.
And if it doesn't work at all? Shit happens.
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