Over the last few years we’ve really had to double down on this rather than relying on VC funding.
In terms of competing with Discord, the good news is that in govtech, we’re basically competing against consumer products like Signal and WhatsApp, as well as stuff like Teams. As a result, Element is not that far from a Discord competitor.
On the other hand, right now we are heads down building out stuff like https://element.io/server-suite and adding antivirus to Element Pro, and similar stuff which govts are willing to pay for, in order to keep the lights on. Meanwhile, fun features like custom emoji and discord-style voice rooms are stuck.
The plan is that when we get to break-even we can get back to our mission to provide secure decentralised comms for everyone, not just govts, but right now the focus is purely on being financially sustainable.
That says, if anyone reading this wants to fund us to get back on the broader mission sooner, do let me know!
They store all the messages in a some sort of distributed append-only graph database, which theoretically makes it a bit more fault-tolerant and censorship-resistant, but which does not work very well in real-world use cases. In addition to performance issues, it makes it very hard to filter out all sorts of abuse on public channels before it reaches the clients. In a rather bizarre turn of events, they implemented a kludge solution (1) in which all the messages are routed through a central server, and after then, passed on to the distributed database.
1) https://matrix.org/blog/2025/04/introducing-policy-servers/
Matrix’s DAG replication scales pretty well - eg rooms like matrix HQ with 65K users spread over 10K+ servers.
Policy Servers are not a kludge, and they do not work by “routing all messages through a central server, and after then, passed onto the distributed database”. They are the opposite, as the linked blog post tries to spell out.
DAG distribution works as normal; messages flow full mesh between servers as always without centralisation. The optional policy server simply provides a /check endpoint which the servers in a given room can use to filter messages for abuse before they pass them to clients. That’s it.
The Matrix HQ room may work every now and then, but it certainly doesn't work well at all.
> Policy Servers are not a kludge, and they do not work by “routing all messages through a central server, and after then, passed onto the distributed database”. They are the opposite, as the linked blog post tries to spell out.
> DAG distribution works as normal; messages flow full mesh between servers as always without centralisation. The optional policy server simply provides a /check endpoint which the servers in a given room can use to filter messages for abuse before they pass them to clients. That’s it.
Distinction without difference. In any case, the single-point-of-failure server is needed to process all the messages and give the go/no go instruction to the larger network.
Policy Servers are not all that optional, since without them, the public rooms will be full of CSAM/gore material, and that is completely unacceptable.
No, it is not a SPOF. If the PS goes down, traffic keeps flowing as normal; it just doesn’t get spamchecked. They do not give a “go/no go instruction to the larger network”; they are something which servers can check against.
The difference in the distinction is that rooms can pick different PSes to moderate traffic, or choose only to turn them on if they’re under attack, or servers participating in a room can choose to use different ones according to taste, etc.
That is still a failure (to spam check), even if it is not a failure to deliver the messages altogether.
It may also end up being a vulnerability. For example, the attackers might do a some sort of flood attack on the policy server, and then get the abuse through.
Yes, but it is not a single point of failure. You can have multiple different policy servers per room, or additional antispam rules per server if you want.
rf15•9mo ago
horsawlarway•9mo ago
But Blizzard Activision style management is a sure fire way to make me leave.
pavel_lishin•9mo ago
mystified5016•9mo ago
There's really not many ways for it to get worse.
pavel_lishin•9mo ago
You had to go and say it, huh :(