This Week in Matrix 2026-04-17

🔗Matrix Live S12E06 – Foundation Updates

🔗Dept of Events and Talks 🗣️

🔗Matrix Community Summit 2026 (website)

HarHarLinks says

Matrix Community Summit is a yearly meetup around pentecost by the community for the community, where Matrix hackers, developers, and visionaries meet on the c-base space station under Berlin for multiple days to collaborate on Matrix. This year it starts on Thursday 21st May and ends on Monday 25th May. If some of that is during your work hours, do not worry! It is the same for us, which is why co-working is part of the concept. For the first time, we will also have both a rooftop experience and a pan-galactic gargleblaster contest.

• sign up for a (free) ticket or help cover the breakfast cost by sponsoring at https://tickets.matrix-community.events/mcs/2026/
• order mind-blowing merch nownownow! - since that is produced by order only - at https://tickets.matrix-community.events/mcs/2026/
• send proposals to the CfP at https://openki.matrix-community.events/ and declare your interest in existing sessions
• join the chat/space #matrix-community-summit-berlin-2026:datanauten.de
• join the orga at #mcs26-orga:datanauten.de
• spread the word!

🔗Matrix Stammtisch Karlsruhe

"Stammtisch" is a German meetup format, where an interest group gathers regularly for informal meetups over drinks. Find more local meetups at matrix-community.events.

The one with the braid (she/her) ⚡ says

A new Stammtisch dropped! If you are from Karlsruhe region, you are kindly invited to join the first Matrix Stammtisch Karlsruhe on Tuesday, 21st of April.

Expect a round of about 10 people. We'll be meeting in the University facilities of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in the Fachschaft ETIT KIT room starting from 5.30 p.m.!

No special knowledge expected. If you're Matrix user, wanna talk about communications, have questions about your Matrix playground or just wanna say hi, you're at the right place!

• Date: Tuesday, 21st of April 2026
• Time: 5.30 p.m. until open end
• Where: Engelbert-Arnold-Str. 5, D-76131 Karlsruhe
• Room: Ground Floor, Room 002, "Fachschaft ETIT"
• Language: English primarily, German accepted

Learn more: #stammtisch-karlsruhe:alsace.hair

🔗Dept of Spec 📜

Andrew Morgan (anoa) {he/him} reports

Here's your weekly occasional 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:

• MSC4451: Deprecate notifications endpoint
• MSC4450: Identity Provider selection for User-Interactive Authentication with Legacy Single Sign-On
• MSC4449: Updated /members filtering

MSCs in Final Comment Period:

• MSC3013: Encrypted Push (close)
  • Being closed in favour of MSC4174: Web Push

Accepted MSCs:

• No MSCs were accepted this week.

Closed MSCs:

• No MSCs were closed/rejected this week.

🔗Spec Updates

The SCT convened again after a few months of not having retros and talked about various points to improve throughput of the MSC process. One of which was an experiment to help MSCs move along the review process, and save them from being stuck waiting for months.

Most MSCs need significant changes before they're ready to be reviewed by the entire SCT. This is due to missing sections, lack of backwards-compatibility, even grammatical changes. Any SCT member can tackle these, and it makes little sense to ask all SCT members to review a MSC at once, before some rounds of iteration on the basics have been carried out. Conversely, picking who should be the one to go through that initial work implicitly often leads to nobody doing it; an instance of the bystander effect.

Thus, the SCT is experimenting with what it calls "Core Reviewers". This was announced on Tuesday in the Office of the Matrix Spec Core Team room. The idea is that one member of the SCT would be nominated to go through an in-depth review of a given MSC that the SCT wants to see move forwards. They will continuously be in charge of helping the author to get the MSC into shape. And at some point they will declare that the MSC is "ready" for the rest of the SCT to look at.

At first glance, this feels similar to how the process should work already. One or more people refine an MSC and then some SCT member goes and declares FCP merge on it when they think it's ready. In practice, without clearly assigning that role to somebody, MSCs can get stuck in a limbo while everyone assumes someone else will handle it.

This is only an experiment, and the SCT will re-evaluate after some time whether it is an effective strategy or not. The concept also differs slightly from "MSC shepherds", which can be anyone - not just a member of the SCT. In general, in project management, assigning someone specifically to work on a task typically gives it a better chance of getting done. We're hoping the same can happen here.

🔗Dept of Trust & Safety ⚖️

🔗Draupnir (website)

A moderation bot for open Matrix communities.

Gnuxie 💜🐝 says

Draupnir is now funded through Open Collective.

If your community relies on Draupnir, please consider supporting it: https://opencollective.com/draupnir.

Sponsorship helps support Draupnir's ongoing development, maintenance, and continuous improvement of the project.

We've also written a report on what we would like to focus on next https://the-draupnir-project.github.io/draupnir-documentation/governance/reports/2604A-selection and you can use submit a response to this form to affirm the project direction.

As always you can reach out to us or come say hi in #draupnir:matrix.org.

🔗Dept of Servers 🏢

🔗Hammerhead

nex (it/its) [starstruck] announces

Since my last post in TWIM about Hammerhead, a fair bit has changed. Most notably:

• The documentation was overhauled (and even embedded into the binary! Everyone gets a copy of the docs!)
• Account security was drastically improved
• Tonnes of bug fixes
• Concepts of an admin API were added
• Full end-to-end encryption support was added!
• A static room directory service was added

That's right, if you were using pre-alpha un-battle-tested software for your critical secure communications, you can now rest assured that your passwords are being stored even more securely than before, and you can communicate with others with reliable end-to-end encryption. Please don't do that though. I'm not responsible for any leaked state secrets.

Because I also wanted to make this TWIM post somewhat flashy, I also added a static room directory, meaning you can now join the project room at #main:hammerhead.nexy7574.co.uk, even though Hammerhead still doesn't support federation.

Speaking on still not supporting things, I've also come up with this rough roadmap for big milestones:

• v0.1.0: Stable, as complete as reasonable client-to-server API implementation surface
• v0.2.0: Reliable appservice systems
• v0.3.0: Federation API implementation
• v0.4.0: World dominance (N.B. remove this one before sending)

I'm also probably going to rename the implementation to something shorter and more memorable before the first alpha is cut (soon!). Don't get too comfy with this name.

If you don't know what Hammerhead is, it's a new small homeserver implementation written in Golang using mautrix-go. If you are interested in following development, you can star the repository at https://codeberg.org/timedout/hammerhead, and join the devroom at #hammerhead:nexy7574.co.uk. There's also the demo instance (details) you can sign up for with your favourite client (they should all work now, apart from Element X), but you might find it's a bit lonely until v0.3.0.

Until next time 🐟

🔗Tuwunel (website)

Enterprise successor to conduwuit, the high-performance and feature-rich fork of Conduit.

jason 🎔 announces

🔗✨️ New Features & Enhancements

• Next-Gen Auth support enhancing ElementX and SchildiNext has arrived! It all began only a month ago with a large draft PR by lytedev assessed by the Tuwunel team to be several months away. What happened next was truly extraordinary. Starting with chbgdn and followed by siennathesane, DonPrus and shaba an entire project within this project assembled to test and iterate this branch at a rapid clip. The OIDC server now builds on existing infrastructure in Tuwunel previously used for SSO. If you have an Identity Provider configured already for use with SSO then the OIDC server Just Works. Huge thanks to everyone involved. (Implements MSC2964/2965/2966/2967)
• S3 Storage support is now available! Starting from a branch graciously developed by exodrifter, Tuwunel now introduces multiple media backends with configurable sections. Support currently includes S3 endpoints and local filesystem directories. The existing media directory is now itself a configurable storage provider implied by the section [global.storage_provider.media.local]. See the examples under [global.storage_provider.<ID>.S3] to configure your own S3 provider. List it in media_storage_providers to download media from it, and store_media_on_providers for uploading media to it. Experimental migration support is available with the !admin query storage sync command.
• User-Interactive Authentication for SSO accounts (MSC2454) has been made possible thanks to @chbgdn in (#389). Accounts no longer require setting a password to use features protected by UIAA flows. Users wishing to disable password authentication on their account altogether may do so by changing it to a single asterisk '*' character (use the admin room commands if your client refuses this password change).
• User-Interactive Authentication for Next-gen OIDC (MSC4312) was implemented by serial auth-system contributor chbgdn. This provides cross-signing/identity reset functionality for ElementX and co.
• Asynchronous media uploads for appservices was implemented thanks to donjuanplatinum (MSC2246).
• Thanks to dasha-uwu the appservice_dir can be configured to a directory containing all your appservice yaml files.
• donjuanplatinum implemented the server-side for fast-joins (MSC3706). Thank you!
• Thanks to ventureoo we support sockets managed by systemd.
• vladexa prevented duplicate reactions from being sent by a client to maintain spec compliance, thank you!
• Thank you alametti for adding delegation examples (e.g. example.com to matrix.example.com) to the documentation.
• Thanks to Lama-Thematique the admin room user registration notice was improved.
• Thank you dasha-uwu for implementing the MSC4143 endpoint.
• Thank you dasha-uwu for removing the report score per MSC4277.
• Thank you dasha-uwu for removing v1 send_join/leave as per MSC4376.
• RocksDB compaction details are logged for the curious in verbose logging builds.

---

💕 GitHub ✦ Releases ✦ Containers ✦ DockerHub 🐕️ Tuwunel 💕

---

🔗continuwuity (website)

Continuwuity is a community-driven Matrix homeserver in Rust.

nex (it/its) [starstruck] reports

Continuwuity 0.5.7 is here! We've had a bunch of awesome new things in this release, including:

• Reading the registration token from a file is supported again
• Added a command to reset users' pushrules to the server default
• Added email support, including email-based password resets, and requiring email verification during registration
• Added an option to deprioritise potentially slow servers during the join process

And fixed a bunch of bugs too!

• You can no longer remove the #admins alias. You need your admin room.
• Fixed server-to-server resolution of servers using SRV delegation
• Fixed a bug that potentially resulted in left rooms remaining in some clients

All of that, and more! See the changelog: https://forgejo.ellis.link/continuwuation/continuwuity/releases/tag/v0.5.7 You should also join our shiny new support room at #continuwuity:continuwuity.org, and check out our space containing all of our other rooms at #space:continuwuity.org.

🔗Dept of Clients 📱

🔗Element X iOS (website)

A total rewrite of Element iOS using the Matrix Rust SDK underneath and targeting devices running iOS 17+.

Mauro says

• We have updated Element X iOS to fully support Xcode 26.4 on CI
• Live Location Sharing has made great progress and we are now in an MVP state, so we are currently working on improvements, polishing and bug fixes, stay tuned, since the feature might be ready very soon.
• Also the Element Classic to Element X in app automatic verification and migration is almost completed, here is a demo: https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/3b0583f3-2cad-4539-9207-e75d82faf71b
• Working on displaying the thread list of a room, so you can always keep track of all the ongoing threads your room has!
• The User Profile screen now honours the homeserver’s capabilities for editing the display name and avatar.
• We also introduced a floating date pill that appears while scrolling the timeline, so you always know the date of the topmost message you are currently seeing.

🔗Element X Android (website)

Android Matrix messenger application using the Matrix Rust SDK and Jetpack Compose.

Benoit says

The TWIM update is quite similar to the iOS one, we are making parallel progress on both applications:

• Live Location Sharing has made progress we have a draft PR.
• Also the Element Classic to Element X in app automatic verification and migration is almost completed. We will have an internal testing session next week. If you're feeling adventurer, you can try it out using the nightly versions of both application. There is a feature flag to enable on EX first, and features flags can now be toggles from the on boarding screen (on nightly and debug builds).
• Working on displaying the thread list of a room, a PR has landed about it
• The User Profile screen now honors the homeserver’s capabilities for editing the display name and avatar.
• We also introduced a floating date pill that appears while scrolling the timeline, so you always know the date of the topmost message you are currently seeing.

Thanks for the contributors! We are seeing many PRs coming from them, sometimes with the help of AI.

🔗Dept of SDKs and Frameworks 🧰

🔗Trixnity (website)

Multiplatform Kotlin SDK for developing Clients, Bots, Appservices and Servers.

Benedict says

Trixnity got a "small" release and now fully supports MSC4354 sticky events. Stay tuned for more MatrixRTC related stuff in the next few weeks.

🔗Halcyon (website)

Halcyon is an easy to use Matrix library inspired by discord.py.

gen3 announces

Halcyon, the easy to use python bot library has hit version 1.4.0. This expands Matrix event coverage (brought us up to latest/v1.8!), improves /sync handling, and makes the message API easier to use for bot authors and prepares us for encryption support.

🔗Key changes

• Broader /sync event support across timeline, state, ephemeral, account data, presence, invite, knock, and leave flows
• Added and improved typed event handling for reactions, redactions, stickers, typing, receipts, and presence
• on_event(event) now works as a universal fallback across supported Matrix event objects
• on_message(message) now cleanly supports both m.room.message and m.sticker event types
• Added developer-friendly message helpers:
  • message.id
  • message.author
  • message.text
  • message.sticker
  • message.attachments
  • message.body, message.url, message.info
• Improved room cache updates and sender enrichment from live sync data
• Room membership state now distinguishes joined, invited, left, banned, and knocked users
• Added public user lookup APIs:
  • get_user_presence(userID=None)
  • get_user_profile(userID)
• doc updates

🔗Upgrade notes

• on_message now has higher-level helpers like message.text, message.sticker, message.attachments, and message.author you should probably use
• room membership summaries now distinguish left, banned, and knocked if you were using that

🔗Dept of Bots 🤖

🔗NioBot

nex (it/its) [starstruck] reports

Unfortunately, for compounding reasons outlined in the README, I have decided to go ahead with the decision to deprecate & archive the NioBot project immediately. You can read more about the deprecation, including alternative library suggestions, in the README: https://github.com/nexy7574/nio-bot/blob/dev/README.md. Thanks for all the fish 🐟️

Contact: #niobot:nexy7574.co.uk | GitHub: https://github.com/nexy7574/nio-bot | Documentation: https://docs.nio-bot.dev/

🔗Dept of Interesting Projects 🛰️

sirloynes announces

Thought it worth sharing a map that's on the Element website that highlights the major public sector deployments in Europe that we know about. We aim to add more deployments, so if you're aware of one that's missing do let us know!

🔗Matrix Federation Stats 📊

Aine [etke.cc] says

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

As of today, 19252 Matrix federateable servers have been discovered by matrixrooms.info, 4335 (22.5%) of them are publishing their rooms directory over federation. The published directories contain 19315 rooms.

The most popular server software among the online servers is:

• synapse: 15352 (79.7%)
• continuwuity: 1432 (7.4%)
• conduit: 624 (3.2%)
• dendrite: 364 (1.9%)

Stats timeline is available on 📊 MatrixRooms.info/stats

🧩 Integrations with apps and servers | 💜 Support the project | 👉 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.

Rank	Hostname	Median MS
1	raccoon.cafe	178
2	melthecat.dev	205.5
3	nerdhouse.io	207.5
4	nelliel.cv	212
5	vrkknn.net	228
6	endcensorship.no1984.cottontail.love	232
7	cisnt.uk	269
8	shork.ch	287.5
9	wawa.wolves4ever.net	299
10	elisaado.com	302

🔗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.