Network
How the DropMeNote messaging network worksMatrix is an open standard for decentralised communication, which securely distributes persistent chatrooms over an open federation of servers preventing any single points of control or failure. The DropMeNote primary messaging infrastructure is built on the Matrix and therefore ready for new features in future relases as the DMN app evolves over time.
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 provides state-of-the-art end-to-end-encryption via the Olm and Megolm cryptographic ratchets. This ensures that only the intended recipients can ever decrypt your messages, while warning if any unexpected devices are added to the conversation.
Matrix’s encryption is based on the Double Ratchet Algorithm popularised by Signal, but extended to support encryption to rooms containing thousands of devices. Olm and Megolm are specified as an open standard and implementations are released under the Apache license, independently audited by NCC Group.
History of MATRIX
In 2017, KDE announced it was working on including support for the protocol in its IRC client Konversation. In late January 2018, the company received an investment of USD $5 million from Status, an Ethereum based startup.
In April 2018, the French Government announced plans to create their own instant messaging tool. Work on the application based on Riot and Matrix protocol—called Tchap after French scientists Claude Chappe—has started in early 2018 and the program was open-sourced and released on iOS and Android in April 2019.
In October 2018, a Community Interest Company called “The Matrix.org Foundation C.I.C.” was incorporated, to serve as a neutral legal entity for further development of the standard.
In February 2019, the KDE community announced to adopt Matrix for its internal communications needs, as a decentralized alternative to other modern tools like Telegram, Slack, and Discord, and operate its own server instance.
In April 2019, Matrix.org suffered a security breach in which the production servers were compromised.This breach was not an issue with the Matrix protocol and did not directly affect homeservers other than matrix.org.
In June 2019, the Matrix protocol is out of beta with the version 1.0 across all APIs (and Synapse, at the time the reference homeserver), and the Matrix foundation is officially launched.
In October 2019, New Vector raised an additional USD $8.5 million to develop Matrix.
In December 2019 German Ministry of Defense announced a pilot project called BwMessenger for secure instant messaging tool based on Matrix protocol, Synapse server and Riot application. This is modelled after French Tchap project. The long-term goal of the Federal Government is the secure use of messenger services that covers all ministries and subordinate authorities.
In December 2019 Mozilla announced that it would begin to use Matrix as a replacement for IRC. It the announcement, they said that they would be completing the move in late January 2020. The Mozilla IRC server, irc.mozilla.org, is said to be removed “no later than March or next year [2020]”.