Thibault Martin

Matrix.org is an ambitious not-for-profit open source initiative defining a new open standard for decentralised, persistent and interoperable communications over the internet. Matrix.org’s aim is to fix the problem of fragmented IP-communications between devices, people and services, and make them as seamless and interoperable as possible. Matrixaddresses use cases like VoIP, IoT and instant messaging but its real potential and ultimate mission is to be a generic messaging and data synchronization system for the web - allowing anyone and anything to easily communicate securely, maintaining full conversation history with no single points of control or failure. Any developer can use Matrix to easily create and host their own feature-rich real-time communication apps or add such features to an existing service whilst building on the Matrix community of users. Existing communication services can also easily join in and integrate with the Matrix ecosystem.The Matrix standard specifies simple RESTful HTTP APIs for securely transmitting and replicating JSON data between Matrix-capable clients, servers and services. Clients send data by PUTing it to a ‘room’ on their server, which then replicates the data over all the Matrix servers participating in this ‘room’. This data is signed using a blockchain-style signature to mitigate tampering, and the federated traffic is encrypted with HTTPS and signed with each server’s private key to avoid spoofing. Replication follows eventual consistency semantics, allowing servers to function even if offline or after data-loss by resynchronizing missing history from other participating servers. End-to-end encryption ensures data at rest is only readable by the room participants. The result is that data transmitted over Matrix is never stored in any single place, and is instead securely shared on a purely need-to-know basis between relevant parties, with control of access residing solely with the author.Awards:-Audience Choice and Best Social Integration Awards at WebRTC Conference & Expo V (San Jose 2014)Best Innovation Award at WebRTC Conference & Expo Paris 2014Nominated in the Company Category at UK Open Source Awards 2015Best in Show at WebRTC Miami 2015