My take on this is: Yes, Matrix’s development would go way faster (6-10x is my estimate) if it wasn’t decentralised. Huge amounts of effort goes into designing

My take on this is: Yes, Matrix’s development would go way faster (6-10x is my estimate) if it wasn’t decentralised. Huge amounts of effort goes into designing a system where you have multiple servers (or peers in p2p) which can’t be trusted, and where the behaviour needs to be formally specified in a neutral public spec that can be independently implemented. You have to layer the spec into abstractions which ensure the lower layers are stable and relatively frozen such that folks can build on them confidently, but the higher layers can evolve and experiment as rapidly as possible. However, we think this is an acceptable cost in exchange for building an open network / protocol / ecosystem like Matrix. Freedom is important. As comex points out, we’ve tried to mitigate slowness by developing the core of Matrix (protocol and reference server and reference clients) by the same logical team rather than by vying factions - which has certainly helped, but only as an incremental factor. The fact it took us 3 years to exit beta for E2EE and turn it on by default reflects more that we chose a large scope (interactive verif, cross-signing, encrypted key backups, etc all break new ground, afaik), had to make it decentralised, and also reflects prioritisation (encryption is not our only focus). So yes, it takes longer to build Matrix than a centralised e2ee messenger. Or longer to build bitcoin than paypal. Or the Web than AOL. But we think it’s worth it.