Apparently Matrix (the federated chat system, see matrix.org) uses a directed acyclic graph to enforce permissions, and it just works reasonably well.
I love that for us. No need for a blockchain.
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Spaces have come a long way, and the whole thing looks like a really compelling alternative to Discord or Slack now.
Thanks, , for sharing your space
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It's also a good alternative to things like Signal or Telegram or whatever. Supports E2EE from the client side (even in a browser). Doesn't require your phone number or rummage through your contacts. Completely safe and private.
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Do you know any good explanation of how it's supposed to do meaningful e2ee without trusting some server operator you're using? (Especially for web version where the client app would be delivered by them, I guess..?)
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Matrix only has E2EE for message content. Servers can see all the events and metadata for rooms including invite, join, leave, kick and ban events. They can see who sent each event, the time it was sent and all the configuration for the rooms. Only message content field is E2EE.
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You can see this for yourself by logging in with a new client and looking at one of the E2EE rooms where you're a member. You can see everything other than the message content. Even reactions are not currently encrypted although there isn't any particular reason they haven't yet.
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Matrix web clients work the same way for E2EE as desktop / mobile clients. State events and history for the rooms are stored on the servers and synced between them. Clients lazily download portion of it they need. Cross-verifying or restoring via recovery code gives E2EE keys.
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When you log in with a new client, it gets you to cross-verify on both sides via a series of emojis or one of the other approaches (QR code or manual).
When you send a message in a room, by default it makes it so that all current sessions of all members of the room can see it.
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If you verify someone, then it will stop you accidentally sending messages to their unverified sessions.
Can also toggle on enforcing not sending messages to unverified users/sessions for a room (or globally) to outright prevent.
The (cross-)verification stuff is all great.
The fatal flaw preventing it from being a serious secure messaging system is the massive amount of metadata that's not encrypted. Literally only encrypts message content and there's a ton of metadata, all stored persistently on the servers since clients are only caching that.
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TL;DR AIUI it's a decent IRC alternative but not a good private one-on-one or tight-trusted-group communication platform.
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