Matrix-independent backend (opt-in federation)

[erlend-sh]

I omitted the following from the Assembling Community OS blog post, to be continued here instead. There's something to be said for non-federated messaging. It's inherently simpler and cheaper to set up. But it's a considerably longer development path, thus not a good fit for a MVP or likely even a v1 product.

p.s. Some of the MLS description isn't quite right, but it still boils down to 'it can be done'.

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Revolt chat comes with some notable superpowers:

• Highly performant and easy to set up, already hosting thousands of tenants on its network at very low cost.
• Designed to carry multi-server networks. Thus our community platform can operate its own network.
• Supports two-way sync with Discord. Crucially allows existing Discord communities to adopt Revolt without having to undertake a disruptive migration and foregoing Discord's current network dominance.

Two (plus two) key features are still needed for Revolt to be everything I need in a bonfire-type app:

Web-public rooms & forum threads

Discord clearly understands the importance of forum features, but the app is unlikely to ever become publicly (anonymously) web-readable and universally links-friendly because that compromises their moat. 

Revolt has no such conflict, and Weird inc. intends to contribute this feature work as soon as the new frontend is stable. The end goal is a hybrid chat+forum app where content can start off as low-effort ephemeral messaging and incrementally transition into structured threads with permanence.

For more on non-rigid chat design and hybridized modes of communication, see Chatting with glue and The future of group messaging.

Encryption & federation

Ideally, Revolt wouldn't just be multi-server, it would be federated. Thankfully that's not something Revolt needs to figure out on its own: Messaging Layer Security is an emerging protocol developed by an IETF working group in collaboration with the folks at Matrix and several other chat experts.

The primary function of MLS is encrypted group messaging, but it also lays the foundation for federated chat environments.

Once MLS has stabilized, Revolt can be made compatible with it the same way Gitter was made compatible with Matrix. Except Revolt should have a considerably easier time since the MLS work is leading to a simpler version of the Matrix protocol called Linearized Matrix.

(Why not build on top of Matrix directly since they’re charting their own path towards MLS compatibility? Because Matrix servers are hard to set up and expensive to run, and their default commitment to federation and encryption impacts UX. A minimum-viable community doesn’t benefit from starting out with that level of complexity.)