Re:Disclosing E2EE vulnerability in multiple Matrix clients
by Arathorn on Monday September 13, 2021 @01:52PM
(#28514463)
It wasn't designed exclusively as a federated network, tbh - we've been planning for P2P since pretty much day one; https://matrix.org/~matthew/2016-12-22%20Matrix%20Balancing%... is a talk I gave in 2015 when Matrix was less than a year old on our plans to go P2P.
Personally, I think it's really nice that in P2P Matrix precisely the same client-server API is used as for normal Matrix, so all the work that goes into the Matrix client and E2EE etc is preserved without any changes at all. Instead, it just talks to a server running on localhost, which then replicates traffic around over the P2P overlay (in future using store-and-forward servers if the target server is offline). It's really not a bunch of hacks, thanks to Matrix being architected to make the replication transport & protocol pluggable from the outset.
Personally, I think it's really nice that in P2P Matrix precisely the same client-server API is used as for normal Matrix, so all the work that goes into the Matrix client and E2EE etc is preserved without any changes at all. Instead, it just talks to a server running on localhost, which then replicates traffic around over the P2P overlay (in future using store-and-forward servers if the target server is offline). It's really not a bunch of hacks, thanks to Matrix being architected to make the replication transport & protocol pluggable from the outset.