Matthew reports
We've recently seen serious spam attacks against Matrix, so we're introducing Policy Servers to recommend whether servers should accept or discard events before they get synced to clients. If your server participates in public rooms, see https://matrix.org/blog/2025/04/introducing-policy-servers to keep it safe.
A total rewrite of Element-iOS using the Matrix Rust SDK underneath and targeting devices running iOS 16+.
Mauro Romito announces
- We are working on implementing a feature to report a room or an invite the contains offensive content
- Also improved our Notification Service Extension to consume less memory
- Updated our app icon
- Some small accessibility improvements were added
- Fixed a crash that might happen when backgrounding the app
Wi11 wrote:
With MAS (Matrix Authentication Service) becoming a prominent part of the Matrix ecosystem, and the removal of the fallback Element provided MatrixRTC backend (Element Call), I wrote a couple of blog articles to document how I installed both with Docker Compose and configured them with Synapse.
Whilst the official docs are very good, perhaps this may be useful as a happy path guide for those who want to use docker compose, MAS, and the Element Call backend, together with Synapse.
➡️ Deploying an Element Call backend (MatrixRTC) with Docker Compose, and configured with Synapse
➡️ Deploying MAS with Docker Compose, migrating users, and configured with Synapse
The Governing Board is an advisory board that is made up of elected representatives from all across the Matrix ecosystem.
Gwmngilfen reports
A few weeks ago the Governing Board brought you news of a Working Group process, and the first ones had been proposed using it. I'm happy to report that we now have our first two active Working Groups!
🔗New Groups
Firstly, we have the Website Working Group, which (from their charter) has "responsibility for editorial and technical oversight of the main Matrix websites and social media channels. This includes the main matrix.org website, conference website, and the various social media channels". They've already had their first meetings, and you can find them in #matrix.org-website:matrix.org
Secondly, we have the Events Working Group, which (again from the charter) is "the main organising team of the official events hosted by the Foundation, such as the Matrix Conference or co-hosting FOSDEM Fringe". They are just spinning up their processes, and you can find them in #events-wg:matrix.org
🔗More Groups Wanted
We want to see many more groups! We have a couple of new groups under consideration by the Board which I hope to bring you news of soon, but in the meantime, discussion and/or volunteering for potential new groups is very welcome in #governing-board-office:matrix.org ! (And yes, I still want to get the Docs and UX groups running, speak to me in that room if you wish to volunteer 😛)
Thanks for your efforts & work, on behalf of your Governing Board!
Jim announces
If you are wondering what the Foundation Safety team get up to, and what we have planned, we have an update for you. Check out the post: Building a Safer Matrix
TravisR announces
Here's your weekly spec update! The heart of Matrix is the specification - and this is modified by Matrix Spec Change (MSC) proposals. Learn more about how the process works at https://spec.matrix.org/proposals.
🔗MSC Status
New MSCs:
- MSC4264: Tokens for Contacting Accounts
- MSC4265: Data Protection Officer contact in /.well-known/matrix/support
- MSC4266: Policies in /.well-known/matrix/support
MSCs in Final Comment Period:
- No MSCs are in FCP.
Accepted MSCs:
- No MSCs were accepted this week.
Closed MSCs:
- No MSCs were closed/rejected this week.
🔗Spec Update
Lots of MSC implementation and iteration is happening behind the scenes at the moment, leading to not very exciting Spec Core Team (SCT) updates :) As this implementation work progresses, the Matrix 2.0 MSCs in particular will continue to push forwards towards acceptance.
In the meantime, early versions of Extensible Profiles is up for review and today's blog post "Building a Safer Matrix" hints at some T&S spec changes expected soon.
The next spec release is expected in early March 2025 - if there's MSCs you think should be included there, let the team know in the SCT Office!
Johannes reports
@this-week-in:matrix.org for people interested in informally discussing the Matrix-based TI-Messenger (TI-M) spec, as of today we have a public room: https://matrix.to/#/#tim-spec:matrix.org
If you haven't heard of TI-M before, in a nutshell it's a chat standard for the German healthcare system.
As a reminder Matrix will again be present at FOSDEM this year!
As always, FOSDEM is free to attend and will happen at the 1. and 2. of February. Additionally we will have a fringe event on the 31st of January. You can find more information in the "Matrix in full force at FOSDEM" blog post.
Additionally please be aware that the Health and Safety Policy for the fringe event will be the same as the one of the Matrix Conference. Extremely briefly: You need to wear a mask while indoors, except while eating and drinking.
Andrew Morgan (anoa) {he/him} reports
Here's your weekly spec update! The heart of Matrix is the specification - and this is modified by Matrix Spec Change (MSC) proposals. Learn more about how the process works at https://spec.matrix.org/proposals.
🔗MSC Status
New MSCs:
- MSC4253: Modifying or rejecting accepted MSCs
- MSC4252: Extensible Events modification: State event handling
- MSC4250: Authenticated media v2 (Cookie authentication for Client-Server API)
MSCs in Final Comment Period:
Accepted MSCs:
- No MSCs were accepted this week.
MSCs in Proposed Final Comment Period:
- MSC4133: Extending User Profile API with Key:Value Pairs
- MSC3765: Rich text in room topics
- MSC3266: Room summary API
- MSC4239: Room version 11 as the default room version
- MSC3757: Restricting who can overwrite a state event
- MSC4183: Additional Error Codes for submitToken endpoint
Closed MSCs:
- MSC3575: Sliding Sync (aka Sync v3)
- Superseded by MSC4186: Simplified Sliding Sync
- [WIP] MSC4097: Interactions between media redirection and authentication
- Replaced by spec-independent approaches.
🔗Spec Updates
As suggested from folks in the TWIM room, the above status now contains MSCs that are currently in proposed Final Comment Period. The hope is that this directs attention to MSCs that are close to being either merged/closed.
Let me know what you think!
The Governing Board is an advisory board that is made up of elected representatives from all across the Matrix ecosystem.
HarHarLinks says
I'm excited to share some quick news from the governing board today! Over the holidays around the new year, we finished the committee chair elections and congratulate:
- Bram and Sumner, chair and vice chair of the Governance committee,
- Sumner and Nico, chair and vice chair of the Community committee,
- Robin and Kevin, chair and vice chair of the Finance committee,
- J.B. and Nico, chair and vice chair of the Trust & Safety committee!
This paves the way for the committees to start taking up work while at the same time the governing board as a whole also finalises the processes around working groups so we can onboard all of you!
We look forward to sharing another update soon, and Matrix @ FOSDEM is also on the horizon, where attendees will be able to meet a good handful of governing board members face to face! For any questions, feedback, or discussion with/about the governing board, join our #governing-board-office:matrix.org!
Until next time!
Andrew Morgan (anoa) {he/him} says
Here's your weekly spec update! The heart of Matrix is the specification - and this is modified by Matrix Spec Change (MSC) proposals. Learn more about how the process works at https://spec.matrix.org/proposals.
🔗MSC Status
New MSCs:
- There were no new MSCs this week.
MSCs in Final Comment Period:
- No MSCs are in FCP.
Accepted MSCs:
- No MSCs were accepted this week.
Closed MSCs:
- No MSCs were closed/rejected this week.
🔗Spec Updates
It may seem quiet from the stats above, but there's actually been a healthy amount of activity across various MSCs this week!
MSC3266: Room summary API had FCP proposed, which moves this long-awaited MSC significantly closer to being accepted. This MSC allows clients to get a quick preview of a room before joining it, which is useful in all sorts of scenarios (see the MSC for a list!). There's still a fair amount of feedback to get through, but much of it is small clarifying comments. Exciting to see this one move forward!
MSC4133: Extending User Profile API with Key:Value Pairs has also been moving forward, with the Synapse implementation in active review by the maintainers, and all concerns on the MSC (currently) having been resolved this week.
There's plenty of activity on other MSCs as authors work to update them. Also a huge thanks again to those working on the spec text itself. Multiple PRs against the matrix-spec repo have been opened following the holidays, all making the spec better for everyone. Thank you!
Josh Simmons (m.org) says
We'd like to welcome Ercom as the newest Silver Member of the Matrix.org Foundation and are excited to announce a couple other new members before the end of the year 🚀
The Matrix.org Foundation stewards the Matrix protocol specification, facilitates open governance, and convenes the ecosystem. While Matrix continues growing in adoption, the Foundation's funding is not keeping pace. If your organization builds on Matrix and is invested in its future, the time to become a funding member is now.
Josh Simmons (m.org) announces
From the department of no-the-other-Matrix: This week saw news of Europol shutting down an encrypted messaging service called MATRIX. All indications are that this has nothing to do with the Matrix protocol, and we are grateful to the agencies and publications that have made an effort to disambiguate. We are, of course, monitoring the situation as more information becomes available.
Will L announces
Work on Sliding Sync – which provides a significantly faster and more scalable sync experience in Matrix clients – has moved to focus on native support, and away from the proxy.
The Sliding Sync Proxy on the Matrix.org homeserver will be decommissioned on November 21st, and client support in Element X will be removed on January 17th.
More details for users as well as server and client developers in Matrix.org's latest blog post
HarHarLinks says
It is
FridayTWIMday the 15th of November, and the Governing Board just came out of their first official meeting after the informal one at the Matrix Conference back in September. The focus of this meeting was to define the structure of the Governing Board, so we expect the results will not have an immediate tangible effect outside the Governing Board, but it gives the Governing Board the basic process to enable taking more perceptible decisions.This includes discussion about how we want to communicate with each other, but we also defined how we vote on actual decisions and some other basic rules for the Governing Board. As a part of that we elected a chair and vice chair for the Governing Board, who are going to help the Governing Board with facilitation tasks. Greg "Gwmngilfen" (chair) and Kim "HarHarLinks" (vice) were elected and are happy to share this post as one of our first actions in this role today. 😁 We also started some subcommittees of the Governing Board, to enable us to work efficiently in smaller groups focussed on specific topics. The rough topics for the initial four committees are Governance, Trust & Safety, Community, and Finances. What their exact scopes are going to be is left as a first task to the respective committees to define along with other bootstrapping, such as electing committee chairs and vice chairs. The set of initial committees is intentionally kept small to remain flexible and open the door for refining them later when we have more experience with how our day to day operations look like. We also discussed defining initial working groups, which would be structured as groups below the committees to fulfil more specific roles and would be the primary way for the Governing Board to include the community. However, we decided to defer that to the committees for now. We got through all the big parts on our agenda but ran out of time before having a formal vote on what communication tools we want to use. We have a great proposal which we are going to vote on asynchronously.
In general we had quite a productive meeting and reached agreements on many topics with clear next steps in other areas. The Governing Board might not have tackled yet the topics you would have prioritised, but it now has an asynchronous voting process and should be able to progress in other areas using the committees.
See you soon with more news from the Governing Board!
Matthew reports
We've also announced Matrix 2.0 as now being usable by mainstream users, to complement the keynote from The Matrix Conference - giving an update on all the APIs that will form Matrix 2.0! https://matrix.org/blog/2024/10/29/matrix-2.0-is-here/
Matthew reports
The Matrix Conference talk videos have been published - check them out at https://2024.matrix.org/watch/ and see Josh's round-up of the conference at https://matrix.org/blog/2024/10/29/matrixconf/
uhoreg says
Here's your weekly spec update! The heart of Matrix is the specification - and this is modified by Matrix Spec Change (MSC) proposals. Learn more about how the process works at https://spec.matrix.org/proposals.
🔗MSC Status
New MSCs:
- MSC4223: Error code for disallowing threepid unbinding
- MSC4222: Adding
state_afterto sync v2- MSC4221: Room Banners
MSCs in Final Comment Period:
Accepted MSCs:
Closed MSCs:
- No MSCs were closed/rejected this week.