Designing Matrix: A Global Decentralized End-to-End Encrypted Communication Network

Explore the design and challenges of Matrix, an open-source project for secure, decentralized real-time communication, in this 42-minute conference talk from SREcon23 Europe/Middle East/Africa. Delve into the unique aspects of creating a byzantine-fault tolerant distributed system optimized for low-latency communication without transactional finality. Learn about the approaches used to scale and operate large-footprint individual instances, and gain insights into upcoming developments such as portable identity, multi-homed accounts, and peer-to-peer Matrix. Discover how this global network, used by governments and major open-source organizations, provides a secure alternative to popular messaging platforms, serving over 106 million users across approximately 100,000 server instances.