
Status.im Invests $5M in Riot.im - dyukqu
https://blog.status.im/status-invests-5m-in-riot-im-4e3026a8bd50
======
nirv
I have never heard of Status.im[0], but I'm glad that the Matrix protocol[1]
and it's major[2] client implementation Riot.im[3]—received significant
financial resources.

We, a small group of tech-savvy people, tried to use Riot client in the early
summer of 2017, but it was far from being convenient for work needs. Poor
UI/UX, overcomplicated E2E-keys sharing, sluggish interface (Electron, as you
might have guessed) and awful mobile app. I'm not sure of the current status,
but I hope now they'll be able to increase the pace of development and quality
of the product, since Matrix is an excellent, federated post-XMPP/IRC
protocol, which we lack today.

 _Upd: references and clarifications._

[0]
[https://wiki.status.im/The_Status_Network_Whitepaper](https://wiki.status.im/The_Status_Network_Whitepaper)

[1] [https://matrix.org/docs/guides/faq.html#what-is-
matrix](https://matrix.org/docs/guides/faq.html#what-is-matrix)

[2] [https://matrix.org/docs/projects/try-matrix-
now.html](https://matrix.org/docs/projects/try-matrix-now.html)

[3] [https://riot.im/](https://riot.im/)

~~~
duozerk
Yes, riot sucks both in its current "desktop" implem (electron indeed) and the
web version - tried it about two months back. You can tell there's possibly
something worthwhile there though; eventually it may become usable for work.

I found the way the software tries systematically to push the user towards the
"official", centralized matrix server distasteful though.

~~~
Kudos
> I found the way the software tries systematically to push the user towards
> the "official", centralized matrix server distasteful though.

Seems like they're simply trying to reduce friction for the on-boarding
process to me. Characterising it as distasteful is taking the piss a bit.

~~~
amandine
Indeed, trying to find the balance between "accessible for your average
WhatsApp user" and "powerful for more advanced users" is still something we're
working on. Nothing deliberate here.

\- Matrix team

------
cocktailpeanuts
While it's great that they found a way to keep working on the project, it
leaves a bad taste in my mouth personally because it feels like ultimate
capitalism in play even when it comes to protocols like this.

Status.im hasn't done much other than raised a huge round of ICO, so they're
sitting on all this money they can use to buy out other "competitor"
protocols. Sure, they have a prototype beta and I guess beta testers are using
it, but they don't even have a working app on the appstore.

Their (Status.im) strategy seems to be use their treasure chest of money and
gain traction by acquiring other protocols (It may sound like a "partnership"
but essentially the whole deal seems to be that these projects that received
investment are expected to integrate with Status token)

I would have no issue with this approach if they actually HAD launched a
product, but like I said, they don't even have a production app.

Riot has been around for a while, and they have an actual product. I think it
sucks that an organization with more money can just buy out another org with
less money. I would have loved to see Riot build their own destiny with their
own tokens instead of raising capital from a competing messaging protocol.

~~~
robert_foss
But has riot.im really been bought? Isn't this just providing the riot.im
developers with more time and developmental resources to push forward with?

~~~
t3chguy
It hasn't been bought, Status had contractually selected some features/bugs
that they wanted fixed but apart from that they do not control riot.im's
roadmap.

\- Contracted Matrix Dev

------
Unklejoe
Cool. I just set up my own Matrix server (Synapse) the other day and have been
using Riot.im on my iPhone. To be honest, everything works much better than I
expected.

Right now, my only complaints are that there are some notification settings
that you can't change from the app, and that the user interface is a little
redundant. I'm highly optimistic though.

~~~
tachion
And who are you talking to? The problem with Matrix (or other messenger
technologies) is not that they're not good enough (in most cases nowdays) but
that if not enough people are using them, they're useless, even if technically
superior. I have pretty great working Jabber server but the issue is I have
literally 2 people left I can talk to using it nowdays and both hardware and
maintenance costs when compared to benefits are not looking good.

~~~
vurpo
Matrix has a big community of people with a lot of active rooms to chat in,
and beyond that it has bridges to other networks like IRC, Gitter, and Slack.
See voyager.t2bot.io for a graph of a whole lot of public Matrix rooms
(created by a crawler bot).

~~~
tachion
This doesn't change a lot. This makes it at best Slack competitor (and I am
aware of the gateways plugins being worked on) and not
WhatsApp/Skype/iMessages competitor.

~~~
andrewflnr
What's wrong with being a Slack competitor? Your perspective here seems to be
"it's useless if it can't take on WhatsApp", which I think is overly
pessimistic.

------
camgunz
It's hard for me to really know what status.im is. It bills itself as an OS,
but it's not because it runs on iOS and Android. Is it a separate app store
and platform? Is it a collection of apps? Is it a library or a set of
protocols?

Is this a problem with the blockchain community? Repurposing long-established
words for their own use ("crypto", "os")?

~~~
Quiark
yeah, the naming.... it's basically a client app for the ethereum ecosystem,
much like the role a web browser has

------
wk2jkhkjdfglsl
Its good that Riot gets money, but its incredibly damning for Status, an ICO
that was meant to produce its own chat platform. This shows status has no
technical ability of their own, and has to ride on existing open source
products.

The status investors paid to build a new platform, and the team is unable to
deliver this.

By paying an existing open source project, yes we all win, but that is not
what people (not myself, are you crazy... lol) paid for.

~~~
Arathorn
Status isn't actually using Matrix in its own tech - they seem to be getting
on great with their own React Native / ClojureScript / Whisper/PSS stack :)

------
lima
How are they supposed to make money?

I distrust for-profit messenger apps, no matter how good their intentions are.
Sooner or later, they'll sell my data :(

~~~
edaemon
I share your distrust, which is one of the reasons I'm not a big fan of
Discord. I don't know where Riot's revenue will come from, but Matrix [1] (and
Riot by extension [2]) support end-to-end encryption. As others have said you
can also set up your own server.

[1] [https://matrix.org/blog/2016/11/21/matrixs-olm-end-to-end-
en...](https://matrix.org/blog/2016/11/21/matrixs-olm-end-to-end-encryption-
security-assessment-released-and-implemented-cross-platform-on-riot-at-last/)

[2] [https://medium.com/@RiotChat/exciting-new-riot-release-
get-r...](https://medium.com/@RiotChat/exciting-new-riot-release-get-ready-
for-chatting-securely-acc93ecfe0a)

~~~
zanny
I absolutely wish Matrix could crush Discord. An entire generation of users
came out burned by programs like Skype, Hangouts, MSM, Facebook Messenger, etc
and then threw themselves eagerly into another closed ecosystem messenger just
because it was one of the first to manage a really performant web client.

~~~
Nuzzerino
I think it can, but it will take time. It is up to the community and userbase
to adopt it as much as it is up to the team behind the software.

~~~
anderspitman
Yeah I think the potential is there, but Riot will probably need features like
Push to Talk and other gaming-oriented stuff.

------
bonsai80
As a backer of the Purism Librem 5, it's nice to see some funding money for
Matrix.org, especially after their recent financial troubles. Good stuff!

------
stevenicr
Any investment in open source makes me happy, especially if there are 5 zeros
or more, that means things can get done for a while, which makes things
better, longer.

The Riot IM site confuses me a bit, I had thought it was an open source client
you could run on own server - but I don't see anything about that there. Did
some digging on matrix and found one mention of vector code on github - not
many details...

Is there someone I can send $100 that can spend some time explaining to me how
to set this up on my own server, and how to mod it a bit so that for example,
most logged info is destroyed after 24 hours and things like that?

After spending time and money on rocket chat I've come to find the value in
hiring an expert / professional in the sphere to consult with before drinking
the koolaid and going all in on the flashy promises on home pages.

added contact info to my profile thing here, I hope it works.

Now if someone would put $2 million into buddypress, and mastadon (I think
that's what its called) I would think we have a future that is possible
without the F and G overlords.

~~~
omnimus
The RIOT (used to be known as Vector) is just main client. There are many more
clients. All listed here [https://matrix.org/docs/projects/try-matrix-
now.html](https://matrix.org/docs/projects/try-matrix-now.html)

Matrix is the protocol - it is a standard. So there are many servers being
implemented. But most of them are Alpha/Beta software. The server from matrix
org everyone uses now is called Matrix Synapse. It is written in python. If
you don't need extreme performance (thousands+ clients) then go with that. On
debian/ubuntu it is simple as apt get matrix-synapse but it can be installed
as any other python app. Then it is basically about setting one config yaml
file (homeserver.yml) and you are done. Lots of guides here
[https://matrix.org/docs/projects/server/synapse.html](https://matrix.org/docs/projects/server/synapse.html)

I run matrix synapse for smallish org and we also tried rocket chat and
mattermost. Riot was by far most stable and fastest. Rocket chat was very
sluggish and mattermost had problems with mobile notifications (i think you
have to pay them for notifications or something like that).

------
shmerl
Good. Seeing how XMPP basically came to a complete stall, may be Matrix can
progress further.

~~~
Shoothe
I wonder why did you get that impression about XMPP, for me it's quite the
opposite. Have you seen [https://conversations.im/](https://conversations.im/)
?

~~~
shmerl
No progress on Muji XEP for years or stagnation of clients like KDE Telepathy
and etc. all gives the impression that things aren't moving anywhere. Also,
servers closing down (DDG one), Google letting federation rot by not enabling
server to server encryption and etc. and etc.

Don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan of XMPP, but the lack of progress is quite
upsetting.

~~~
Shoothe
It's true that not every XEP moved out of draft status and that big players
closed federation but there are new XEPs that are being worked on (OMEMO, HTTP
Upload).

Google and DDG do not provide Matrix servers and probably will never do (big
players are not interested in federation in general, not just XMPP), but isn't
the entire point of federation that you host your own?

Check out conversations.im and dino.im for modern clients.

------
kenning
What does this product do?

~~~
Unklejoe
Riot.im is an open source Android/iOS/web messaging app. It uses the Matrix
protocol, which is also open. There is a reference Matrix server called
"Synapse", which I actually just started running the other day.

With these components, you can host your own messaging platform.

~~~
MentallyRetired
Who will I message?

~~~
frabcus
I use it as an IRC/Slack alternative, and it's pretty good - especially for
the equivalent of public channels. The apps are better and easier to explain
than IRC ones, and it is easier to join and more open than Slack.

Naturally, if you're making a new channel for a group, you have to ask
everyone in the group to join it. That's the case whatever messenger you use.

There is crypto now for private messages, but it is a little clunky to setup
still. I hope that the funding helps make this better!

For friends I've shared keys with, it works really well. Of course, right now
people will only join for ideological reasons. That's OK though!

------
fegul
One of my biggest concerns with Matrix was the amount of device data that it
exposes.

It's extremely easy to fingerprint the devices that someone is using (it
literally tells you right within Riot) and by design could make it easy for
someone to track you or target your device if there are any known exploits for
it.

~~~
Arathorn
We've already fixed this - devices are now described as "Desktop", "Mobile" or
"Web" by default. It was a thinko (mine actually) that we put too much detail
in the device descriptions originally :(

------
mirimir
I've always resisted commenting on project names, but Riot? I was thinking re
flash mobs. But OK, it's some sort of joke.

------
xstartup
Matrix is a good product. I am glad they got finally funded!

------
rrggrr
Great, another messaging app. My phone and desktop are overrun by them.

~~~
frabcus
Let me know when it is overrun by open, federated ones.

