
A Call to Arms: Supporting Matrix - Arathorn
https://matrix.org/blog/2017/07/07/a-call-to-arms-supporting-matrix/
======
Arathorn
(oops, the blog link melted under all the attention but it's fixed again now).

Just wanted to say that of all the communities on the 'net, HN has been one of
the most enthusiastic about the potential of Matrix. Trying to build an
entirely open decentralised network that can support better-than-Slack style
collaboration is a tonne of work; I'd estimate it's about 6x more work than
building the equivalent centralised service. Plus the amount of effort that
we've put into decentralised end-to-end encryption
([https://matrix.org/git/olm/about](https://matrix.org/git/olm/about) etc) is
_enormous_ , and now very nearly complete, having got solutions in place for
(optionally) sharing message history on demand between devices, handling race
conditions during splitbrains, etc.

In short, we've put a lot of work into Matrix and we really want to continue
doing so with at least the same level of momentum we've had to date. But as of
next week, this is going to require support from the community - both
donations and corporate sponsorship, at least in the short/medium term. So if
you believe in the promise of decentralisation and restoring power over
communication back to the users, your support would be _hugely_ appreciated.

Also, folks may be specifically interested in the 'Reflections' section at the
end of the post, which points out that in the near future Matrix is going to
be forced to address an even bigger issue than open comms - namely the ability
to handle propaganda and let users filter their content (to avoid spam,
propaganda, abuse, etc) without being trapped in an invisible filter-bubble or
echo-chamber. This stuff is still vapourware right now, but could be literally
world-changing if we get it right.

Anyway, thanks for reading, and thanks to those who consider supporting
directly.

\-- Matthew / Arathorn

~~~
urbit
As a competitor (or "competitor," I don't think decentralized services
actually compete with each other in the traditional sense), I just want to
say:

Matrix is an amazing project with an incredibly hard-working team. If you can
afford to, please stop what you're doing right now and give them money. Or
code. Or both. We can win this thing!

\-- Urbit

~~~
Arathorn
One of the things that gives us (Matrix) enormous hope for the future is the
shift we've seen in the Decentralised Web community over the last few years,
where projects who in the past might have competed now support each other.

In the end, there is an _incredibly_ small handful of developers working on
decentralised infrastructure, who generally share very similar ideology and
goals, pitted against an entire industry which defaults to holding users
hostage in silos. We gotta stick together to prevail :)

So, Urbit: huge thanks for the support - we really appreciate it. And good
luck on your side too!

~~~
urbit
I agree - I see this Benjamin Franklin ("if we don't all stand together, we
shall all hang separately") attitude everywhere.

But I don't think this new attitude is an accident. It's not just because
we're good people, or even good engineers. It's an inevitable consequence of
what we're trying to do.

Fundamentally, _all decentralized systems are one big federation_. If two
decentralized systems can't talk to each other, that's because no one needs to
connect them yet. There is never a question of whether the connection _can_ be
made, as with centralized systems.

In short: for decentralized systems, the n in Metcalfe's law ("the value of a
network is proportional to n^2, where n is its user count" \- I think it's
more like n log n, but whatever) is the number of users not in any
decentralized network, but in _all decentralized networks_. (It also should
add any centralized networks that you can gateway to.)

What this means in practice for Urbit and Matrix: if both Urbit and Matrix
succeed, a gateway is inevitable. It's inevitable because (a) it will be
demanded and (b) no one can prevent it. Then, Urbit will benefit from Matrix's
network effect and vice versa.

So economically, we're not competitors. We're colleagues. So building a
positive relationship is a professional no-brainer. In the new decentralized
world, the only reason to be a jerk to someone else is that you're actually a
jerk. You'll see this, but it isn't common -- at all.

(However, our domain is googleable and yours isn't. Owned! We'll just have to
link to you :-)

------
cyphar
Thank god we can finally give money to support you folks. For the past year
I've been waiting for the day that I can fund the development of Matrix (for
context, in the past they made it clear that they didn't feel they needed
funding because they all had jobs working on Matrix).

I have just pledged 50EUR a month (kudos for providing _two_ free software
systems for donations -- though GNU Taler would've been another nice
addition). I would also pledge my time if I wasn't already working overtime on
other free software work. To everyone who just reads HN comments and skips the
articles -- if you have the means, donate: {
[https://patreon.com/matrixdotorg](https://patreon.com/matrixdotorg) ;
[https://liberapay.com/matrixdotorg](https://liberapay.com/matrixdotorg) ;
1LxowEgsquZ3UPZ68wHf8v2MDZw82dVmAE }.

Matrix is truly a very revolutionary piece of technology, and they deserve far
more support than they're getting. I'm gladly investing now in the hopes that
the Matrix of the future will deliver on what I see them doing. I'm really
hoping that one day people will switch _to Matrix_ because of its features and
not because I badgered them to do so. Here's hoping.

Good luck.

~~~
Arathorn
Wow, thank you cyphar! That is very generous and hugely appreciated :) We will
be doing everything we can to keep Matrix growing and evolving as fast as we
possibly can.

------
Chris2048
What is Matrix?

Matrix is an open standard for interoperable, decentralised, real-time
communication over IP. It can be used to power Instant Messaging, VoIP/WebRTC
signalling, Internet of Things communication - or anywhere you need a standard
HTTP API for publishing and subscribing to data whilst tracking the
conversation history.

Matrix defines the standard, and provides open source reference
implementations of Matrix-compatible Servers, Clients, Client SDKs and
Application Services to help you create new communication solutions or extend
the capabilities and reach of existing ones.

What is Matrix’s Mission?

Matrix’s initial goal is to fix the problem of fragmented IP communications:
letting users message and call each other without having to care what app the
other user is on - making it as easy as sending an email.

The longer term goal is for Matrix to act as a generic HTTP messaging and data
synchronisation system for the whole web - allowing people, services and
devices to easily communicate with each other, empowering users to own and
control their data and select the services and vendors they want to use.

~~~
shuntress
Isn't HTTP already a generic messaging and data synchronisation system for the
whole web?

How will Matrix be anything other than another stack in the field of silos?

Genuine question. I'm not trying to be combative.

Edit: After doing some more reading through the matrix docs, it seems that the
goal is to make an _extremely_ easy to implement/setup endpoint that any
'silo' can easily include. This Matrix endpoint will automagically connect to
the Matrix endpoint on other 'silos' to facilitate message transfers.

Is this accurate?

~~~
Arathorn
HTTP itself doesn't give you any standard way to synchronise blobs of real-
time data (IMs, VoIP signalling, etc) between servers, or even really between
servers and clients.

Sure you can write a webapp which uses some combination of long-lived GET,
PUT, websockets, HTTP/2 Push etc to 'push' realtime messages around the place,
but there's no standard way of doing it; each app makes up its own fragmented
and proprietary set of APIs.

So Matrix fixes this by defining a standard HTTP API (which can also be used
with other RPC transports if you prefer).

------
Perceptes
Creator of Ruma (Matrix apps/libs built in Rust) here. If you're not already
familiar with Matrix, this article won't help much in convincing you to
support it. I'd recommend reading our Introduction to Matrix[0] and Why Matrix
Matters[1]. Keep in mind they are written for a largely non-technical audience
and are intended to explain what Matrix is conceptually without a lot of
implementation detail.

I generally don't think Patreon is a good way to fund software development,
but I will be contributing anyway because the work the Matrix team is doing is
critical. Open, secure communication on the Internet is one of the most
important and relevant issues today.

The Matrix team has been great to work with in developing Ruma. As Matthew
mentions in the post, our development has been slowed somewhat by lack of
updates to the Matrix spec, but they've had the Ruma team's full support in
prioritizing end-to-end encryption in Riot, as it's simply a more urgent
priority than enabling independent implementations of the spec. It's been
clear to us that the only thing preventing improvements to the spec is the
lack of bandwidth on the Matrix team, and in that sense, today's news is
actually good news, because now we have a chance to help increase their
bandwidth beyond what their parent company could provide.

[0] [https://www.ruma.io/docs/matrix/](https://www.ruma.io/docs/matrix/) [1]
[https://www.ruma.io/docs/matrix/why/](https://www.ruma.io/docs/matrix/why/)

~~~
pmoriarty
What advantage does Matrix offer over IRC?

~~~
ryukafalz
Server-side history storage, optional end to end encryption, mobile clients
with push notifications (the client doesn't have to maintain a persistent
connection), voice/video chat, file uploads (and embeds for certain
filetypes)... among other things.

~~~
vvanders
Also it cleanly bridges to IRC so it's not a one-or-the-other situation. Was
really impressed when I looked at it a while back.

------
brunoqc
I hope this works well. I love Matrix and Riot. It's what I dream XMPP would
be.

------
Arkanosis
I'll do a donation, if anything, to show my support to what you are trying to
achieve. I wish Matrix and anyone working on it the best.

Arathorn, links to matrix.org and riot.im on Patreon are all plain HTTP; is it
voluntary? Thanks!

~~~
Arathorn
oops, the Patreon wysiwyg HTML editor was autolinking to plain HTTP; now
fixed. thanks. (and thanks for donation!!)

~~~
Arkanosis
Awesome, thanks again!

------
erlend_sh
Please accept donations through OpenCollective as well. I'd prefer to donate
through another open source project that I have great faith in.

[https://opencollective.com](https://opencollective.com)

~~~
cyphar
Note that libreapay is also a free software payment system.

------
chrisco255
Why not do an ICO?

~~~
Arathorn
We're considering it - there are some places where it fits very nicely (e.g.
paying to prove you're not a spammer; providing a token for apps/widgets/bots
with Matrix; money transfers within Matrix)... but we also have our hands
_very_ full with the core tech of Matrix itself without opening another
battlefront.

Meanwhile in the short term, we're hoping that Patreon/Liberapay donations and
corporate sponsorship will let us focus on the current work to be done
immediately.

~~~
akvadrako
Are those things really comparable in scale?

It looks like the typical ICO with a half-decent execution and product backing
it raises a few million dollars.

~~~
Arathorn
Yup, you're right that Patreon-style donations are typically $1K-$10K a month,
whereas an ICO can produce millions of ether or bitcoin. So it's a tricky
compromise: whether to pause core Matrix work to pursue an ICO (on the
assumption that the ICO bubble doesn't pop in the next few months)... or
whether to try to get corporate funding/sponsorship and Patreon-style
donations in order to keep laser-focus on the Matrix core.

As per the earlier post: we haven't closed the door on an ICO; it will likely
depend on how much sponsorship we get in the next few weeks.

~~~
akvadrako
I agree it's a hassle - it would be nice if there was something like a
kickstarter for ICOs.

