10 ms·

Status.im Invests $5M in Riot.im

212 points by dyukqu 9y ago

kenning 9y ago
What does this product do?
- maroonparty 9y ago
  AFAIK it's an alternative to slack
- Unklejoe 9y ago
  Riot.im is an open source Android/iOS/web messaging app. It uses the Matrix protocol, which is also open. There is a reference Matrix server called "Synapse", which I actually just started running the other day. With these components, you can host your own messaging platform.
  - MentallyRetired 9y ago
    Who will I message?
    - no_protocol 9y ago
      I'm connected to Discord, Slack, and irc chats from Matrix/riot.im. It's working great for me after about a year of use. I also invited some friends to join my Matrix server directly, but there wasn't much pickup yet. But that doesn't matter since I'm already connected to the places where people are via Matrix.
    - vurpo 9y ago
      Check voyager.t2bot.io for a big list of different public Matrix rooms. There are lots of active rooms, as well as bridges to the biggest IRC networks, Slack, Gitter, Discord, and more.
    - shmerl 9y ago
      It's federated.
    - frabcus 9y ago
      I use it as an IRC/Slack alternative, and it's pretty good - especially for the equivalent of public channels. The apps are better and easier to explain than IRC ones, and it is easier to join and more open than Slack. Naturally, if you're making a new channel for a group, you have to ask everyone in the group to join it. That's the case whatever messenger you use. There is crypto now for private messages, but it is a little clunky to setup still. I hope that the funding helps make this better! For friends I've shared keys with, it works really well. Of course, right now people will only join for ideological reasons. That's OK though!
Unklejoe 9y ago
Cool. I just set up my own Matrix server (Synapse) the other day and have been using Riot.im on my iPhone. To be honest, everything works much better than I expected. Right now, my only complaints are that there are some notification settings that you can't change from the app, and that the user interface is a little redundant. I'm highly optimistic though.
- tachion 9y ago
  And who are you talking to? The problem with Matrix (or other messenger technologies) is not that they're not good enough (in most cases nowdays) but that if not enough people are using them, they're useless, even if technically superior. I have pretty great working Jabber server but the issue is I have literally 2 people left I can talk to using it nowdays and both hardware and maintenance costs when compared to benefits are not looking good.
  - vurpo 9y ago
    Matrix has a big community of people with a lot of active rooms to chat in, and beyond that it has bridges to other networks like IRC, Gitter, and Slack. See voyager.t2bot.io for a graph of a whole lot of public Matrix rooms (created by a crawler bot).
    - tachion 9y ago
      This doesn't change a lot. This makes it at best Slack competitor (and I am aware of the gateways plugins being worked on) and not WhatsApp/Skype/iMessages competitor.
      - andrewflnr 9y ago
        What's wrong with being a Slack competitor? Your perspective here seems to be "it's useless if it can't take on WhatsApp", which I think is overly pessimistic.
  - floatboth 9y ago
lima 9y ago
How are they supposed to make money? I distrust for-profit messenger apps, no matter how good their intentions are. Sooner or later, they'll sell my data :(
- no_protocol 9y ago
  I'm not sure. But I'm also not sure they need to have any of your data. The riot.im client lets you connect to your own Matrix server rather than an "official" one, so they're not really able to monitor your usage or know who you are unless the app is phoning home. Maybe it's collecting analytics data? Would love to know. I only use the Riot.im app on mobile and use other clients for desktop usage.
  - BubuIIC 9y ago
    Analytics is there, depending on platform it's either opt-in or opt-out. Android is opt-out for now, desktop seems to be opt-in. Not sure about web.
    - t3chguy 9y ago
      web and desktop are opt-out, but it all is very minimal and redacts anything personal - Dev who wrote Riot's Analytics
      - t3chguy 9y ago
        Also the latest development version adds transparency as to exactly what it collects
        dikiaap 9y ago
        Does riot.im will support 2FA?
      - deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
- 9y ago
nirv 9y ago
I have never heard of Status.im[0], but I'm glad that the Matrix protocol[1] and it's major[2] client implementation Riot.im[3]—received significant financial resources. We, a small group of tech-savvy people, tried to use Riot client in the early summer of 2017, but it was far from being convenient for work needs. Poor UI/UX, overcomplicated E2E-keys sharing, sluggish interface (Electron, as you might have guessed) and awful mobile app. I'm not sure of the current status, but I hope now they'll be able to increase the pace of development and quality of the product, since Matrix is an excellent, federated post-XMPP/IRC protocol, which we lack today. Upd: references and clarifications. [0] https://wiki.status.im/The_Status_Network_Whitepaper https://wiki.status.im/The_Status_Network_Whitepaper [1] https://matrix.org/docs/guides/faq.html#what-is-matrix https://matrix.org/docs/guides/faq.html#what-is-matrix [2] https://matrix.org/docs/projects/try-matrix-now.html https://matrix.org/docs/projects/try-matrix-now.html [3] https://riot.im/ https://riot.im/
- floatboth 9y ago
  You don't need Electron. It's just a web app. I just run Riot as a pinned tab in Firefox.
  - thomastjeffery 9y ago
    That doesn't make it any less clunky or sluggish.
    - NoGravitas 9y ago
      Eh, it reduces the memory overhead to run it in your existing browser rather than run a separate browser runtime just for Riot.
- duozerk 9y ago
  Yes, riot sucks both in its current "desktop" implem (electron indeed) and the web version - tried it about two months back. You can tell there's possibly something worthwhile there though; eventually it may become usable for work. I found the way the software tries systematically to push the user towards the "official", centralized matrix server distasteful though.
bonsai80 9y ago
As a backer of the Purism Librem 5, it's nice to see some funding money for Matrix.org, especially after their recent financial troubles. Good stuff!
rrggrr 9y ago
Great, another messaging app. My phone and desktop are overrun by them.
- shmerl 9y ago
  Blame those who don't support the idea of IM federation.
- frabcus 9y ago
  Let me know when it is overrun by open, federated ones.
- tosser2018 9y ago
  Relevant xkcd. What we need is another standard. https://xkcd.com/927/ https://xkcd.com/927/
- 55555 9y ago
  My friend recommends something called Franz. I havent tried it.
cocktailpeanuts 9y ago
While it's great that they found a way to keep working on the project, it leaves a bad taste in my mouth personally because it feels like ultimate capitalism in play even when it comes to protocols like this. Status.im hasn't done much other than raised a huge round of ICO, so they're sitting on all this money they can use to buy out other "competitor" protocols. Sure, they have a prototype beta and I guess beta testers are using it, but they don't even have a working app on the appstore. Their (Status.im) strategy seems to be use their treasure chest of money and gain traction by acquiring other protocols (It may sound like a "partnership" but essentially the whole deal seems to be that these projects that received investment are expected to integrate with Status token) I would have no issue with this approach if they actually HAD launched a product, but like I said, they don't even have a production app. Riot has been around for a while, and they have an actual product. I think it sucks that an organization with more money can just buy out another org with less money. I would have loved to see Riot build their own destiny with their own tokens instead of raising capital from a competing messaging protocol.
- robert_foss 9y ago
  But has riot.im really been bought? Isn't this just providing the riot.im developers with more time and developmental resources to push forward with?
  - t3chguy 9y ago
    It hasn't been bought, Status had contractually selected some features/bugs that they wanted fixed but apart from that they do not control riot.im's roadmap. - Contracted Matrix Dev
- pablanopete 9y ago
  Hey there! Status is acctually making this investment not in the traditional capacity, but rather allowing New Vector (matrix, riot) to continue their development on their own terms. Status has a very close to working MVP; developing an application completely based off of new protocols and a decentralized environment is no easy task and much R&D still has to be done with Ethereum and the whole ecosystem in general before any of these new systems are production ready; and Status aims to stay true to the ethos of keeping a completely decentralized interface and system while supporting others in the ecosystem that share that same vision. If you sign up for our alpha on status.im you can test out our (already functional) product. The majority of work left to be done is in performance and security audits.
shmerl 9y ago
Good. Seeing how XMPP basically came to a complete stall, may be Matrix can progress further.
- Shoothe 9y ago
  I wonder why did you get that impression about XMPP, for me it's quite the opposite. Have you seen https://conversations.im/ https://conversations.im/ ?
  - shmerl 9y ago
    No progress on Muji XEP for years or stagnation of clients like KDE Telepathy and etc. all gives the impression that things aren't moving anywhere. Also, servers closing down (DDG one), Google letting federation rot by not enabling server to server encryption and etc. and etc. Don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan of XMPP, but the lack of progress is quite upsetting.
    - Shoothe 9y ago
      It's true that not every XEP moved out of draft status and that big players closed federation but there are new XEPs that are being worked on (OMEMO, HTTP Upload). Google and DDG do not provide Matrix servers and probably will never do (big players are not interested in federation in general, not just XMPP), but isn't the entire point of federation that you host your own? Check out conversations.im and dino.im for modern clients.
camgunz 9y ago
It's hard for me to really know what status.im is. It bills itself as an OS, but it's not because it runs on iOS and Android. Is it a separate app store and platform? Is it a collection of apps? Is it a library or a set of protocols? Is this a problem with the blockchain community? Repurposing long-established words for their own use ("crypto", "os")?
- Quiark 9y ago
  yeah, the naming.... it's basically a client app for the ethereum ecosystem, much like the role a web browser has
xstartup 9y ago
Matrix is a good product. I am glad they got finally funded!
wk2jkhkjdfglsl 9y ago
Its good that Riot gets money, but its incredibly damning for Status, an ICO that was meant to produce its own chat platform. This shows status has no technical ability of their own, and has to ride on existing open source products. The status investors paid to build a new platform, and the team is unable to deliver this. By paying an existing open source project, yes we all win, but that is not what people (not myself, are you crazy... lol) paid for.
- jtl999 9y ago
  Why reinvent the wheel when a superior open source solution is in development?
- Arathorn 9y ago
  Status isn't actually using Matrix in its own tech - they seem to be getting on great with their own React Native / ClojureScript / Whisper/PSS stack :)
mirimir 9y ago
I've always resisted commenting on project names, but Riot? I was thinking re flash mobs. But OK, it's some sort of joke.
stevenicr 9y ago
Any investment in open source makes me happy, especially if there are 5 zeros or more, that means things can get done for a while, which makes things better, longer. The Riot IM site confuses me a bit, I had thought it was an open source client you could run on own server - but I don't see anything about that there. Did some digging on matrix and found one mention of vector code on github - not many details... Is there someone I can send $100 that can spend some time explaining to me how to set this up on my own server, and how to mod it a bit so that for example, most logged info is destroyed after 24 hours and things like that? After spending time and money on rocket chat I've come to find the value in hiring an expert / professional in the sphere to consult with before drinking the koolaid and going all in on the flashy promises on home pages. added contact info to my profile thing here, I hope it works. Now if someone would put $2 million into buddypress, and mastadon (I think that's what its called) I would think we have a future that is possible without the F and G overlords.
- omnimus 9y ago
  The RIOT (used to be known as Vector) is just main client. There are many more clients. All listed here https://matrix.org/docs/projects/try-matrix-now.html https://matrix.org/docs/projects/try-matrix-now.html Matrix is the protocol - it is a standard. So there are many servers being implemented. But most of them are Alpha/Beta software. The server from matrix org everyone uses now is called Matrix Synapse. It is written in python. If you don't need extreme performance (thousands+ clients) then go with that. On debian/ubuntu it is simple as apt get matrix-synapse but it can be installed as any other python app. Then it is basically about setting one config yaml file (homeserver.yml) and you are done. Lots of guides here https://matrix.org/docs/projects/server/synapse.html https://matrix.org/docs/projects/server/synapse.html I run matrix synapse for smallish org and we also tried rocket chat and mattermost. Riot was by far most stable and fastest. Rocket chat was very sluggish and mattermost had problems with mobile notifications (i think you have to pay them for notifications or something like that).
- omnimus 9y ago
  Oh sorry you want to hire someone. I did not understand.
fegul 9y ago
One of my biggest concerns with Matrix was the amount of device data that it exposes. It's extremely easy to fingerprint the devices that someone is using (it literally tells you right within Riot) and by design could make it easy for someone to track you or target your device if there are any known exploits for it.
- Arathorn 9y ago
  We've already fixed this - devices are now described as "Desktop", "Mobile" or "Web" by default. It was a thinko (mine actually) that we put too much detail in the device descriptions originally :(

212 points by dyukqu 9y ago

kenning 9y ago

What does this product do?

maroonparty 9y ago
AFAIK it's an alternative to slack
Unklejoe 9y ago
Riot.im is an open source Android/iOS/web messaging app. It uses the Matrix protocol, which is also open. There is a reference Matrix server called "Synapse", which I actually just started running the other day. With these components, you can host your own messaging platform.
- MentallyRetired 9y ago
  Who will I message?
  - no_protocol 9y ago
    I'm connected to Discord, Slack, and irc chats from Matrix/riot.im. It's working great for me after about a year of use. I also invited some friends to join my Matrix server directly, but there wasn't much pickup yet. But that doesn't matter since I'm already connected to the places where people are via Matrix.
  - vurpo 9y ago
    Check voyager.t2bot.io for a big list of different public Matrix rooms. There are lots of active rooms, as well as bridges to the biggest IRC networks, Slack, Gitter, Discord, and more.
  - shmerl 9y ago
    It's federated.
  - frabcus 9y ago
    I use it as an IRC/Slack alternative, and it's pretty good - especially for the equivalent of public channels. The apps are better and easier to explain than IRC ones, and it is easier to join and more open than Slack. Naturally, if you're making a new channel for a group, you have to ask everyone in the group to join it. That's the case whatever messenger you use. There is crypto now for private messages, but it is a little clunky to setup still. I hope that the funding helps make this better! For friends I've shared keys with, it works really well. Of course, right now people will only join for ideological reasons. That's OK though!

Unklejoe 9y ago

Cool. I just set up my own Matrix server (Synapse) the other day and have been using Riot.im on my iPhone. To be honest, everything works much better than I expected. Right now, my only complaints are that there are some notification settings that you can't change from the app, and that the user interface is a little redundant. I'm highly optimistic though.

tachion 9y ago
And who are you talking to? The problem with Matrix (or other messenger technologies) is not that they're not good enough (in most cases nowdays) but that if not enough people are using them, they're useless, even if technically superior. I have pretty great working Jabber server but the issue is I have literally 2 people left I can talk to using it nowdays and both hardware and maintenance costs when compared to benefits are not looking good.
- vurpo 9y ago
  Matrix has a big community of people with a lot of active rooms to chat in, and beyond that it has bridges to other networks like IRC, Gitter, and Slack. See voyager.t2bot.io for a graph of a whole lot of public Matrix rooms (created by a crawler bot).
  - tachion 9y ago
    This doesn't change a lot. This makes it at best Slack competitor (and I am aware of the gateways plugins being worked on) and not WhatsApp/Skype/iMessages competitor.
    - andrewflnr 9y ago
      What's wrong with being a Slack competitor? Your perspective here seems to be "it's useless if it can't take on WhatsApp", which I think is overly pessimistic.
- floatboth 9y ago

lima 9y ago

How are they supposed to make money? I distrust for-profit messenger apps, no matter how good their intentions are. Sooner or later, they'll sell my data :(

no_protocol 9y ago
I'm not sure. But I'm also not sure they need to have any of your data. The riot.im client lets you connect to your own Matrix server rather than an "official" one, so they're not really able to monitor your usage or know who you are unless the app is phoning home. Maybe it's collecting analytics data? Would love to know. I only use the Riot.im app on mobile and use other clients for desktop usage.
- BubuIIC 9y ago
  Analytics is there, depending on platform it's either opt-in or opt-out. Android is opt-out for now, desktop seems to be opt-in. Not sure about web.
  - t3chguy 9y ago
    web and desktop are opt-out, but it all is very minimal and redacts anything personal - Dev who wrote Riot's Analytics
    - t3chguy 9y ago
      Also the latest development version adds transparency as to exactly what it collects
      - dikiaap 9y ago
        Does riot.im will support 2FA?
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
9y ago

nirv 9y ago

I have never heard of Status.im[0], but I'm glad that the Matrix protocol[1] and it's major[2] client implementation Riot.im[3]—received significant financial resources. We, a small group of tech-savvy people, tried to use Riot client in the early summer of 2017, but it was far from being convenient for work needs. Poor UI/UX, overcomplicated E2E-keys sharing, sluggish interface (Electron, as you might have guessed) and awful mobile app. I'm not sure of the current status, but I hope now they'll be able to increase the pace of development and quality of the product, since Matrix is an excellent, federated post-XMPP/IRC protocol, which we lack today. Upd: references and clarifications. [0] https://wiki.status.im/The_Status_Network_Whitepaper https://wiki.status.im/The_Status_Network_Whitepaper [1] https://matrix.org/docs/guides/faq.html#what-is-matrix https://matrix.org/docs/guides/faq.html#what-is-matrix [2] https://matrix.org/docs/projects/try-matrix-now.html https://matrix.org/docs/projects/try-matrix-now.html [3] https://riot.im/ https://riot.im/

floatboth 9y ago
You don't need Electron. It's just a web app. I just run Riot as a pinned tab in Firefox.
- thomastjeffery 9y ago
  That doesn't make it any less clunky or sluggish.
  - NoGravitas 9y ago
    Eh, it reduces the memory overhead to run it in your existing browser rather than run a separate browser runtime just for Riot.
duozerk 9y ago
Yes, riot sucks both in its current "desktop" implem (electron indeed) and the web version - tried it about two months back. You can tell there's possibly something worthwhile there though; eventually it may become usable for work. I found the way the software tries systematically to push the user towards the "official", centralized matrix server distasteful though.

bonsai80 9y ago

As a backer of the Purism Librem 5, it's nice to see some funding money for Matrix.org, especially after their recent financial troubles. Good stuff!

rrggrr 9y ago

Great, another messaging app. My phone and desktop are overrun by them.

shmerl 9y ago
Blame those who don't support the idea of IM federation.
frabcus 9y ago
Let me know when it is overrun by open, federated ones.
tosser2018 9y ago
Relevant xkcd. What we need is another standard. https://xkcd.com/927/ https://xkcd.com/927/
55555 9y ago
My friend recommends something called Franz. I havent tried it.

cocktailpeanuts 9y ago

While it's great that they found a way to keep working on the project, it leaves a bad taste in my mouth personally because it feels like ultimate capitalism in play even when it comes to protocols like this. Status.im hasn't done much other than raised a huge round of ICO, so they're sitting on all this money they can use to buy out other "competitor" protocols. Sure, they have a prototype beta and I guess beta testers are using it, but they don't even have a working app on the appstore. Their (Status.im) strategy seems to be use their treasure chest of money and gain traction by acquiring other protocols (It may sound like a "partnership" but essentially the whole deal seems to be that these projects that received investment are expected to integrate with Status token) I would have no issue with this approach if they actually HAD launched a product, but like I said, they don't even have a production app. Riot has been around for a while, and they have an actual product. I think it sucks that an organization with more money can just buy out another org with less money. I would have loved to see Riot build their own destiny with their own tokens instead of raising capital from a competing messaging protocol.

robert_foss 9y ago
But has riot.im really been bought? Isn't this just providing the riot.im developers with more time and developmental resources to push forward with?
- t3chguy 9y ago
  It hasn't been bought, Status had contractually selected some features/bugs that they wanted fixed but apart from that they do not control riot.im's roadmap. - Contracted Matrix Dev
pablanopete 9y ago
Hey there! Status is acctually making this investment not in the traditional capacity, but rather allowing New Vector (matrix, riot) to continue their development on their own terms. Status has a very close to working MVP; developing an application completely based off of new protocols and a decentralized environment is no easy task and much R&D still has to be done with Ethereum and the whole ecosystem in general before any of these new systems are production ready; and Status aims to stay true to the ethos of keeping a completely decentralized interface and system while supporting others in the ecosystem that share that same vision. If you sign up for our alpha on status.im you can test out our (already functional) product. The majority of work left to be done is in performance and security audits.

shmerl 9y ago

Good. Seeing how XMPP basically came to a complete stall, may be Matrix can progress further.

Shoothe 9y ago
I wonder why did you get that impression about XMPP, for me it's quite the opposite. Have you seen https://conversations.im/ https://conversations.im/ ?
- shmerl 9y ago
  No progress on Muji XEP for years or stagnation of clients like KDE Telepathy and etc. all gives the impression that things aren't moving anywhere. Also, servers closing down (DDG one), Google letting federation rot by not enabling server to server encryption and etc. and etc. Don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan of XMPP, but the lack of progress is quite upsetting.
  - Shoothe 9y ago
    It's true that not every XEP moved out of draft status and that big players closed federation but there are new XEPs that are being worked on (OMEMO, HTTP Upload). Google and DDG do not provide Matrix servers and probably will never do (big players are not interested in federation in general, not just XMPP), but isn't the entire point of federation that you host your own? Check out conversations.im and dino.im for modern clients.

camgunz 9y ago

It's hard for me to really know what status.im is. It bills itself as an OS, but it's not because it runs on iOS and Android. Is it a separate app store and platform? Is it a collection of apps? Is it a library or a set of protocols? Is this a problem with the blockchain community? Repurposing long-established words for their own use ("crypto", "os")?

Quiark 9y ago
yeah, the naming.... it's basically a client app for the ethereum ecosystem, much like the role a web browser has

xstartup 9y ago

Matrix is a good product. I am glad they got finally funded!

wk2jkhkjdfglsl 9y ago

Its good that Riot gets money, but its incredibly damning for Status, an ICO that was meant to produce its own chat platform. This shows status has no technical ability of their own, and has to ride on existing open source products. The status investors paid to build a new platform, and the team is unable to deliver this. By paying an existing open source project, yes we all win, but that is not what people (not myself, are you crazy... lol) paid for.

jtl999 9y ago
Why reinvent the wheel when a superior open source solution is in development?
Arathorn 9y ago
Status isn't actually using Matrix in its own tech - they seem to be getting on great with their own React Native / ClojureScript / Whisper/PSS stack :)

mirimir 9y ago

I've always resisted commenting on project names, but Riot? I was thinking re flash mobs. But OK, it's some sort of joke.

stevenicr 9y ago

Any investment in open source makes me happy, especially if there are 5 zeros or more, that means things can get done for a while, which makes things better, longer. The Riot IM site confuses me a bit, I had thought it was an open source client you could run on own server - but I don't see anything about that there. Did some digging on matrix and found one mention of vector code on github - not many details... Is there someone I can send $100 that can spend some time explaining to me how to set this up on my own server, and how to mod it a bit so that for example, most logged info is destroyed after 24 hours and things like that? After spending time and money on rocket chat I've come to find the value in hiring an expert / professional in the sphere to consult with before drinking the koolaid and going all in on the flashy promises on home pages. added contact info to my profile thing here, I hope it works. Now if someone would put $2 million into buddypress, and mastadon (I think that's what its called) I would think we have a future that is possible without the F and G overlords.

omnimus 9y ago
The RIOT (used to be known as Vector) is just main client. There are many more clients. All listed here https://matrix.org/docs/projects/try-matrix-now.html https://matrix.org/docs/projects/try-matrix-now.html Matrix is the protocol - it is a standard. So there are many servers being implemented. But most of them are Alpha/Beta software. The server from matrix org everyone uses now is called Matrix Synapse. It is written in python. If you don't need extreme performance (thousands+ clients) then go with that. On debian/ubuntu it is simple as apt get matrix-synapse but it can be installed as any other python app. Then it is basically about setting one config yaml file (homeserver.yml) and you are done. Lots of guides here https://matrix.org/docs/projects/server/synapse.html https://matrix.org/docs/projects/server/synapse.html I run matrix synapse for smallish org and we also tried rocket chat and mattermost. Riot was by far most stable and fastest. Rocket chat was very sluggish and mattermost had problems with mobile notifications (i think you have to pay them for notifications or something like that).
omnimus 9y ago
Oh sorry you want to hire someone. I did not understand.

fegul 9y ago

One of my biggest concerns with Matrix was the amount of device data that it exposes. It's extremely easy to fingerprint the devices that someone is using (it literally tells you right within Riot) and by design could make it easy for someone to track you or target your device if there are any known exploits for it.

Arathorn 9y ago
We've already fixed this - devices are now described as "Desktop", "Mobile" or "Web" by default. It was a thinko (mine actually) that we put too much detail in the device descriptions originally :(