Trying Matrix Decentralized Messaging Service

Today I had quite some adventures with Matrix and decentralised messaging protocols. I thought about self-hosting an instance so I tried Synapse, which is the de facto Matrix implementation with all the features available. Quickly I understood that Synapse was too slow for a very tiny VPS so I tried Dendrite which claims to be much more efficient.

So… It run, but it was consuming 100% of all the 2 cores of the CPU of my VPS and yet it didn’t manage to load previous messages of the chats (perhaps that’s a limitation as it doesn’t have all the features yet). As that was a continuous high consumption for over 2 hours, I decided to take it down and create an account at a hosted Matrix instance. I chose tchncs.de, which is hosted in Germany. I didn’t want to go for the default matrix.org because that’s where everyone is and that goes against the decentralisation aspect of the thing.

When - and if - the protocol matures, I hope to see a more efficient implementation tailored for single users or small communities that can still do federation with other instances without dying. I also added my Matrix contact to my contacts page ✨