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P2P Matrix

matrix.org

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Re: P2P Matrix

#131

Post by Arathorn »

ashleysmithgpu wrote: post #128
gonehome wrote: post #44

This is exciting - I'm looking forward to it. I've been nerding out a bit playing with Matrix/Riot and Urbit - there's a lot of exciting stuff happening in this space. If you like what Matrix is doing consider paying $10/month for your own server via Modular.im ( https://modular.im/ ). It supports the Matrix devs and you get your own high performance federated server to use on the network. Their automation makes it e…

I was interested in a server, but the website does not mention how much storage or any details at all really. Anyone happen to know where to find that info?

matrix.org is the website for the non-profit foundation that looks after the overall project. https://matrix.org/hosting lists hosting providers, of which https://modular.im is run by the core team and directly funds development of Matrix. There aren't hard storage limitations on Modular currently.

Re: P2P Matrix

#132

Post by Arathorn »

schoolornot wrote: post #125
josh2600 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The contact social graph in signal is stored inside of SGX using a service called contact discovery. Signal is attempting to design the system such that Signal can never know whose contacts are in your phone as a service provider. They deal with side-channel leakage of lookups from the contact DB into the enclave using a technique called linear scan which is a constant-time bitwise XOR operation on every contact. Thi…

Do you know anyone who was able to successfully compile & run the server as well as re-compile the mobile clients to specify a different server address? Smells a bit like vendor lock-in to me if you aren't going to bother adding such a UI widget on a FOSS app.

Signal or Riot? For Riot, it's easy to switch the default server - e.g. https://github.com/vector-im/riot-web/blob/develop/config.sa... for Riot Web. Building the server is trivial too.

Re: P2P Matrix

#133

Post by annoyingnoob »

abvdasker wrote: post #72

This is the dream. From the end user's perspective there has never been a good reason to have a centralized server between them and the person they want to talk to. If Matrix can pull this off it has the potential to go way beyond chat. I will be following them much more closely following this announcement.

Don't forget Skype. A successful project will be a target.

Re: P2P Matrix

#134

Post by Arathorn »

grizzles wrote: post #130
Arathorn wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think you've understood the design decision. Matrix isn't a distributed ledger, and doesn't provide transactional guarantees. For unencrypted conversation, the user trusts their server not to spoof their messages. Other servers cannot spoof history as messages are signed into a room DAG. The worst scenario is that a malicious server could indeed withhold messages from a room DAG, and this would be indistingui…

I don't understand the distinction you are making between a distributed ledger and distributed consistency. I suspect it will be easy to create a byzantine error avalanche with your current design - or break consistency (eg. different views). I'd be keen to see what aphyr could do with a jepsen test. Perhaps you could run an open hack matrix contest to see what people can achieve. It might surprise you.

I'm saying that Matrix does not aim to be globally consistent within a room, or even seek consensus.

It's perfectly valid and indeed desirable for the network to partition, and for one side of the network to go off talking amongst itself, and the other side to continue, and then for the conversation to join up again afterwards.

Different views are a feature. Imagine you're using P2P Matrix to stay in touch while hiking - you fire up adhoc wifi, use mDNS to discover other peers, and get chatting away. Some people drift in and out of contact, and perhaps even the party splits. But the conversation continues fine for those still present in it. Nobody can spoof each other's messages; nobody can replay each other's messages; nobody can reorder messages; the worst that can happen is for messages to get withheld, maliciously or otherwise.

> I'd be keen to see what aphyr could do with a jepsen test.

Me too. We're overdue an audit, and we'll reach out (assuming he's not too fiendishly expensive).

> Perhaps you could run an open hack matrix contest to see what people can achieve. It might surprise you.

There's already quite a high incentive on the open network to show off by exploiting bugs in Matrix - which is what helped accelerate the v2 of the state resolution algorithm that I tried to link earlier.

Separately, the French government maintains a bounty for their Matrix deployment over at https://yeswehack.com/programs/tchap - and we're also looking forward to an academic paper being published in the coming weeks which is a super deep dive into analysing and auditing our state resolution alg. It might surprise you.

Re: P2P Matrix

#135

Post by Arathorn »

annoyingnoob wrote: post #133
abvdasker wrote: post #72

This is the dream. From the end user's perspective there has never been a good reason to have a centralized server between them and the person they want to talk to. If Matrix can pull this off it has the potential to go way beyond chat. I will be following them much more closely following this announcement.

Don't forget Skype. A successful project will be a target.

Skype was never maintained by a non-profit foundation, and was never open source. Even if companies building on Matrix like New Vector get acquired by whoever, the project itself should live on.

Re: P2P Matrix

#136

Post by rglullis »

viraptor wrote: post #110
rglullis wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My idea was more in that every p2p node of Matrix can also be a IPFS server, and be used to pin all of your own media + a small cache of your contacts/group media. You wouldn't need to save all of the media your homeserver is dealing with, but you still could be reasonably sure that your node would be able to find all media you are supposed to access. Given that the post talks about libp2p and how libp2p's main drive…

> + a small cache of your contacts/group media This idea always sounds interesting and dangerous to me. There's a lot of content you really don't want to be a provider for for legal and other reasons. Caching it for yourself is one thing - public distribution is another.

Yeah, I stopped development of one project due to this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22246797

Re: P2P Matrix

#137

Post by Arathorn »

bigphishy wrote: post #127

Had to download the DMG file directly from riot, I was having no luck finding it on the "official apple app store" https://riot.im/download/desktop/

That's because we haven't published it there. Do people actually use the Mac App Store?

Re: P2P Matrix

#138

Post by voltagex_ »

core-questions wrote: post #55
gonehome wrote: post #44

This is exciting - I'm looking forward to it. I've been nerding out a bit playing with Matrix/Riot and Urbit - there's a lot of exciting stuff happening in this space. If you like what Matrix is doing consider paying $10/month for your own server via Modular.im ( https://modular.im/ ). It supports the Matrix devs and you get your own high performance federated server to use on the network. Their automation makes it e…

How is the new Urbit stuff, since you mention it? Is it usable for a casual but interested user?

Looks like it's still relying on Ethereum, which IMO is irresponsible from a climate change / energy use point of view.

Re: P2P Matrix

#140

Post by jasonzemos »

StavrosK wrote: post #57

Does anyone have a guide/instructions for self-hosting a Matrix server? I'm not sure which server to run, I heard Synapse is a bit heavy and there's a lighter Rust alternative? Which one should I use? Is it okay to run it at home, or will I lose messages on downtime? I assume other hosts will retry when my connection is back up?

https://github.com/matrix-construct/construct
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