This Week in Matrix 2025-02-07

🔗Matrix Live

🔗Dept of Status of Matrix 🌡️

Quentin Gliech reports

This week we released Matrix Authentication Service 0.13.0!

This is a big release, as we haven't done one since September.

It is fixing a lot of small issues, but here are a few of the big highlights:

• The email verification has been completely reworked, meaning that accounts don't require a valid email address on them anymore! They are still required for open password registrations, but MAS won't nag you anymore to add an email to your account.
• No more spurious logouts when consuming a refresh token! That was a recurring annoyance for people using Element X in poor network conditions.
• It now reliably provisions users to Synapse! Sometimes, MAS would just stop provisioning new sessions if, for some reason, it lost connections to Postgres. This is a thing of the past, as now MAS has a reliable job queue.
• New translations! MAS is now available in Czech, Dutch, Estonian, English, French, German, Portuguese, Simplified Chinese, Swedish, and Ukrainian. If you'd like to help MAS get translated to your language, head out to our Localazy project
• Better support for non-OIDC upstream OAuth 2.0 providers. Support for 'social login' options like Google or Sign-in with Apple went from 'good' to 'great', with many UI improvements.

Upgrading should be as easy as grabbing the latest Docker image or the pre-built binaries, restarting the service and voilà!

Feel free to stop by #matrix-auth:matrix.org to join in on the discussion and if you encounter a bug make sure to report it here.

🔗Dept of Spec 📜

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:

• MSC4263: Preventing MXID enumeration via key queries
• MSC4262: Sliding Sync Extension: Profile Updates
• MSC4261: "Do not encrypt for device" flag

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

There's not a ton of updates this week: the team is focusing on reviewing Matrix 2.0 MSCs to move them towards release. The team is also thinking about when to release the spec this calendar quarter, and may aim for late February or early March.

Watch this space for updates :)

🔗Dept of Servers 🏢

🔗Synapse (website)

Synapse is a Matrix homeserver implementation developed by Element

~creme reports

envs has put together a small tool for Synapse to block temporary email addresses during user registration and stop invite spam.

You can find the Repo and more details at: https://github.com/envs-net/synapse_blocklist_module

🔗Dept of Ops 🛠

🔗matrix-tf-aws

A Fully Automated Terraform Deployment for Matrix on AWS

rsb_tbg reports

Hey everyone, check out my newly public Terraform module on GitHub! It fully automates the deployment of a Synapse homeserver along with 0-4 currently-supported Mautrix bridges (Discord, Signal, Telegram, WhatsApp) on AWS—no manual setup required.

🔗🔧 What’s Included?

The module provisions the following resources:

✅ VPC & Networking – Private/public subnets, NAT, security groups
✅ ECS Cluster – Runs Synapse and selected Mautrix bridges
✅ EFS & Access Points – Persistent storage for Synapse
✅ Aurora PostgreSQL – Scalable, managed database
✅ S3 Buckets – Storage for configs and logs
✅ TLS Certificate – Secure HTTPS for your ALB
✅ Dynamic Secrets – No hardcoded tokens/passwords; all are auto-generated
✅ And other resources to connect everything together

🔗🚀 Getting Started

All you need before launching:

🔹 A Route 53 domain for your Matrix homeserver name
🔹 If using the Telegram bridge, a Telegram API ID & hash

Once you initialize the module with Terraform, you’ll have the option to customize configurations and registration files to fit your needs. You can even modify them post-deployment and simply run terraform apply to apply the changes.

🔗 Check it out here: https://github.com/matrix-tf/matrix-tf-aws

It’s super easy to use—whether you’re setting up your first Matrix server or already a pro. Hope it helps! 🚀

🔗Dept of Events and Talks 🗣️

🔗FOSDEM

Thib (m.org) says

If you want to see what's been happening behind the scenes to organize Matrix' presence at FOSDEM this year, I blogged about my perspective as an attendee, booth organizer, and devroom organizer.

A proper wrap-up post from the Foundation is coming, once we'll have all the recordings published!

🔗Matrix Retreat 2025: Workation in Thailand

HarHarLinks announces

Greetings from Thailand! You may have heard previously about a Matrix-related technology-retreat in Thailand this winter. Well, it’s happening as we speak! Some of us have made our way, directly following FOSDEM, to the beautiful island of Koh Phangan in the gulf of Thailand. We are staying in Tongsala working our day jobs across two coworking spaces. The seven of us will be joined by two more tomorrow, with most of us staying until the 17th of March where we will be attending FOSSASIA, operating a Matrix Stand, giving some talks [1] [2] [3], and handing out stickers which we brought despite limited baggage allowance (priorities!). If you have, or know anyone who has, contacts to Matrix enthusiasts in Asia - or if you want to come join us, please get in touch via #workation-nation-matrix-thailand-2025:datanauten.de! Outside of work, we are exploring Matrix-related tech-projects including a Matrix RTC call recorder, a message search, and the rust-matrix-web. We look forward to updating you on our progress!

🔗Dept of Guides 🧭

Matthew reports

Anil, head of the Energy and Environment Research Group at the University of Cambridge just published a fun guide for how to use hookshot for webhooks in Matrix: https://anil.recoil.org/notes/enter-the-matrix-hookshot

🔗Matrix Federation Stats

Aine [don't DM] announces

collected by MatrixRooms.info - an MRS instance by etke.cc

As of today, 10712 Matrix federateable servers have been discovered by matrixrooms.info, 3177 (29.7%) of them are publishing their rooms directory over federation. The published directories contain 22325 rooms.

Stats timeline is available on MatrixRooms.info/stats

How to add your server | How to remove your server

🔗Dept of Ping

Here we reveal, rank, and applaud the homeservers with the lowest ping, as measured by pingbot, a maubot that you can host on your own server.

🔗#ping:maunium.net

Join #ping:maunium.net to experience the fun live, and to find out how to add YOUR server to the game.

🔗That's all I know

See you next week, and be sure to stop by #twim:matrix.org with your updates!

To learn more about how to prepare an entry for TWIM check out the TWIM guide.