France donates to the Matrix Foundation (which helps the protocol retain its neutrality and independence, and is very much appreciated), but doesn't currently financially support Element's dev as their upstream. We're trying to fix that though!

better this way than the other way, element doesn't support the matrix foundation enough

Element has put tens of millions of dollars into Matrix over the years and today provides hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of resources per year to support it.

Amandine (acting managing dir on the fdn) is preparing the public financial report of the Foundation which will have more details on this; it should be out in a few weeks.

I've always thought the really low bandwidth support they added a few years ago was to support the french subs. It matched all the requirements of VLF/ELF communications.

It wasn't France (and, ironically, it wasn't funded - it was mainly us showing off)