This Week in Matrix

🔗Matrix Live S11E23 - Multi-tenancy and an audit of ESS

🔗Dept of Spec 📜

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:

• MSC4427: Custom banners for user profiles
• MSC4426: User Status Profile Fields
• MSC4425: Ephemeral media

MSCs in Final Comment Period:

• No MSCs are in FCP.

Accepted MSCs:

• MSC4376: Remove /v1/send_join and /v1/send_leave
• MSC4341: Support for RFC 8628 Device Authorization Grant
• MSC4284: Policy Servers

Closed MSCs:

• [WIP] Placeholder

🔗Spec Updates

This week a number of MSCs were accepted. One notable entry is MSC4284: Policy Servers, which is a huge step forwards for moderation on Matrix.

In essence, while moderation is typically reactive in Matrix today - where someone posts spam and a bot catches it 5-10 seconds later - this MSC shifts it to be proactive. An event isn't sent into the room, or accepted by other homeservers, until it's run by a policy server.

And it doesn't stop there. Other MSCs are now building on top of policy servers to add more proactive moderation to Matrix. Hopefully the days of (briefly) seeing spam on Matrix is coming to a close. Huge thanks to the folks working to keep the public federation safe.

Continue reading…

🔗Matrix Live S11E22 – WebAuthn in MAS

🔗Dept of Status of Matrix 🌡️

🔗vodozemac (website)

An implementation of Olm and Megolm in pure Rust.

dkasak announces

🔗The Matrix.org Security team publishes analysis of reported vodozemac issues

Following a public disclosure discussing potential cryptographic issues in vodozemac, the Matrix.org Security team published a technical analysis addressing the claims and their impact.

Continue reading…

🔗Matrix Live S11E21 – Commet

🔗Dept of Status of Matrix 🌡️

Matthew announces

We're delighted to welcome the massive influx of users looking for decentralised alternatives to Discord!

We published a post about what to expect, and some clarity on the growing challenges posed by age verification.

Welcoming Discord users amidst the challenge of Age Verification

Continue reading…

🔗Matrix Live S11E21 live from the Matrix Hackathon at FOSDEM 2026

Last week at FOSDEM 2026 we hosted our very first Matrix Hackathon with the community. The results were amazing and presented in this Matrix Live Edition.

You can find out more about Matrix at FOSDEM 2026 in the FOSDEM Wrap Up.

🔗Dept of Public Sector

🔗🇸🇪 Sweden’s Public Sector (eSam) Proposes Open Federation Protocol

Kenneth Edwall announces

We are excited to see a major strategic shift proposed in Sweden! eSam, a collaboration program consisting of 41 Swedish government agencies, has released a new report: "Common Federation Protocol for Chat in the Public Sector" (ES2025-20).

The report explicitly recommends moving away from fragmented, proprietary silos towards a common, open federation protocol.

Key highlights from the report:

Protocol over Product: The working group stresses that the public sector needs to agree on a "common language" (protocol) rather than a single product. This allows agencies to choose different clients or hosting providers while maintaining interoperability.

Digital Sovereignty & Security: The report highlights the risks of depending on global tech giants for business critical communication between authorities and the "lock-in" effects of proprietary communication protocols.

Matrix as the Prime Example: The report references the success of Matrix in other nations. It cites the French government's Tchap, Germany’s BwMessenger and openDesk, and Luxembourg's Luxchat among others as proof that open federation works at scale.

The Recommendation: The working group proposes that eSam formally decides to establish a joint collaboration to start implement an open federation protocol.

The report concludes that sticking to open standards is a strategic investment in "digital autonomy" and allows Sweden to avoid the fragmentation seen in the post-Skype for Business era.

It’s fantastic to see Sweden taking steps to join the growing federated public sector network in Europe! You can read the full report via eSam.

Official homepage https://www.esamverka.se/aktuellt/nyheter/nyheter/2026-01-30-ny-rapport---gemensamt-federationsprotokoll-for-chatt-i-offentlig-sektor.html

Report https://www.esamverka.se/download/18.2eb33fa919b2c04ecba7dcb/1769777961813/ES2025-20%20Common%20Federation%20Protocol%20for%20Chat%20in%20the%20Public%20Sector.pdf

Appendices https://www.esamverka.se/download/18.2eb33fa919b2c04ecba7dcd/1769777982072/dSam%20All%20appendices%20A-J%20ES2025-20.pdf

Continue reading…

🔗Matrix Live S11E20 – Sharing Encrypted History

🔗Dept of Events and Talks 🗣️

🔗Matrix at FOSDEM

HarHarLinks announces

We're excited that by this time next week, a lot of us will have gathered in Brussels for FOSDEM!

Check out our initial blog post for some photos of how this looked in 2025!

🔗Hackathon

We are looking forward to filling Hackerspace Brussels with beyond 100 Matrix hackers who signed up! We start at 9:00 in the morning and will finish the day with a round of lightning presentations at 17:00. Watch the banner on matrix.org and join the chat below for possible live stream announcements! 👀

This hackathon is a friendly place for Matrix newcomers just as well as veterans who will offer their mentorship. If you are interested in sponsoring lunch, dinner, livestream, or prizes, please reach out. Learn more on the blog and join us in #fosdem-2026-hackathon:matrix.org to stay informed!

🔗Booth

Booths all over the campus buildings allow a great diversity of projects to present themselves, and this includes Matrix. Visit us in building AW!

The booth is staffed by volunteers, and few shifts remain available! You can self-register using our shift management platform to join the fun and meet other Matrixers! On top, booth staff will receive one of a kind Matrix-at-FOSDEM-2026 T-shirts!

Whether you join the team or not, we are always looking for projects to put on display! Please reach out to #events-wg:matrix.org or via email with your ideas: your project, demo, stickers, or more!

🔗Devroom

Devrooms at FOSDEM are themed tracks, and we are organising the Decentralised Communications devroom. You can find the schedule on FOSDEM's website.

The devroom is hosted by a stage host introducing the speakers and a video technician ensuring the right camera or slides are shown on stream and recording. If you are interested in joining the team in either position, please reach out to #events-wg:matrix.org or via email.

Continue reading…

🔗Matrix Live

🔗Dept of Events and Talks 🗣️

Michael @matrix / away in 🇯🇵 Japan until Jan, 19 says

Hi people, we (@bboett:matrix.org & @michaelmicheal:matrix.org) are doing a Stammtisch like meeting in Tokyo on 17th January 2026 @19:00 JST. We call it "Matrix Pop-up meeting Tokyo". All people around an interested to join please go to room #matrix-popup-tokyo:pwl.social

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🔗Dept of Status of Matrix 🌡️

Amandine says

🚀 We’re happy to start the year by announcing Meedio joining the Foundation as a new Silver member! Meedio builds and sells Matrix-based video conferencing systems, hosted in EU or on-premise. Welcome! 🤗

Continue reading…

🔗Dept of Events and Talks 🗣️

🔗FOSDEM

Thib announces

🔗Hackathon

We're excited that more than 50 people have signed up for our Hackathon before FOSDEM, including some seasoned developers who are willing to mentor newcomers. We're looking forward to meeting everyone there!

If your organisation wants to support the Matrix community for this event and get brand recognition for it, please reach out to [email protected] to sponsor the prizes, lunch, dinner, or drinks!

🕐️ Friday, 30th January, 09:00 - 17:00 CET (local time)
🏢 HSBXL, Rue Osseghem 53, 1080 Molenbeek
🎫 Free registration here
Join us in #fosdem-2026-hackathon:matrix.org to stay informed!

🔗Booth

We'll have a booth for both FOSDEM days, on Sat. 31st Jan. and Sun. 1st Feb. We already have a solid team staffing the booth, but there are a few remaining slots if you want to lend us a hand and leave FOSDEM with a limited edition volunteer T-shirt! (Little birds told me this year the T-shirts would be Spezicolored!)

Find us in building AW!

🔗Devroom

We're coordinating the Decentralised Communications Devroom. We have a pretty cool line-up with focusing on T&S, Matrix, XMPP, ActivityPub, AT and more.

Joins us to get up to speed on what's happening in the decentralised communications world, and why not help cross-pollinate between projects 🐝

🕐️ Sunday, 1st February, 09:00 - 17:00 CET (local time) 🏢 Room AW1.126

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🔗Matrix Live S11E18 – Happy Holidays!

🔗Dept of Status of Matrix 🌡️

🔗Website & Content WG Report

HarHarLinks says

Only 2 weeks later we are back with a quick wrapup of recent activities on the website before the holidays.

• Jack S. has been supporting us greatly in shipping a million updates to all kinds of ecosystem projects as well as finding and fixing some smaller issues and contributions.
• We cleaned up the blog categories a bit, slowly working towards clearer definition of what goes where.
• salixh5 checked the status of and contributed an update to the LINE bridge during a Matrix Stammtisch.
• anoa updated our footer social media icons to include the Foundation's Bluesky profile.
• We have updated the homepage to fulfil the platinum membership perk.
• andybalaam contributed documentation on how to hide images by default using different Matrix clients via the T&S R&D WG.
• The T&S team announced policyserv, the SCT published Matrix v1.17, and the Events WG shared the latest news about the upcoming FOSDEM 2026.
• We greatly simplified the website contribution workflow by updating the PR template and introducing more automated checks via linters. More about that is on the horizon and looking for contributors!
• The effort to tag issues we are looking for help for continues. You can already find 30 to get involved with using the help wanted tag!

The website office hour is on holidays and will return in its regular slot on 8th January! In the meantime, you can still find us in the #matrix.org-website:matrix.org room and of course keep sending PRs! See you again at TWIM next year.

Continue reading…

🔗Dept of Spec 📜

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:

• MSC4388: Secure out-of-band channel for sign in with QR
• MSC4387: M_SAFETY error code
• MSC4386: Automatically sharing secrets after device verification

MSCs in Final Comment Period:

• No MSCs are in FCP.

Accepted MSCs:

• No MSCs were accepted this week.

Closed MSCs:

• MSC4124: Simple Server Authorization
  • Superseded by MSC4345: Server key identity and room membership.
• MSC4099: Participation based authorization for servers in the Matrix DAG
  • Superseded by MSC4345: Server key identity and room membership.
• MSC3953: Server capability DAG
  • Superseded by MSC4345: Server key identity and room membership.
• MSC4294: Ignore and mass ignore invites
  • Superseded by MSC4155: Invite Filtering

🔗Spec Updates

The Spec Core Team expects to release Matrix v1.17 next week with a few MSCs, along with some improvements to the spec website. Stay tuned for those!

Otherwise we're still working away at Matrix 2.0 MSCs - trying to keep them at the forefront while occasionally dipping into other MSCs. MSC4143: MatrixRTC, MSC4354: Sticky Events and MSC4186: Simplified Sliding Sync are the three currently being most actively worked on. The team appreciates your patience while the details are being hammered out.

Continue reading…