Here's your weekly spec update! The heart of Matrix is the specification - and this is modified by Matrix Spec Change (MSC) proposals. Learn more about how the process works at https://spec.matrix.org/proposals.
This big news this week is the Project Hydra coordinated security release. On August 11th, 2025, updated homeserver implementations were put out to address the vulnerabilities. And the following Thursday, August 14th, the associated spec updates were put out as well (which divulge further details).
The largest part of this is the new Room Version 12, which had a spec PR merged on the same. It explains the changes servers and clients need to make to address the vulnerabilities.
The relevant MSCs and spec PRs were merged and homeserver and client implementations should have already (or should do now if they haven't) updated to support the new changes. However, the changes to the spec won't actually appear in a new spec release until the next release cycle, keeping in line with the usual spec process. The next release is due to go out in the next few weeks as we approach the end of Q3 2025.
A reminder that patches for the coordinated security release of Matrix server implementations will go out this Monday, August 11th 2025 at 17:00 UTC. If you run your own homeserver, please be ready to update around that time to receive security patches!
Last week we were excited to announce two new Working Groups! Huge thanks to Nico who is acting as the Governing Board sponsor for both the Trust & Safety Research & Development Working Group and the Room Directory Working Group. You can learn more about both as well as the existing Events Working Group and Website & Content Working Group on the website at https://matrix.org/foundation/working-groups/!
Feedback form getting these new Working Groups set up helped us at the Governing Board identify some parts in our bylaws and processes documents that were a bit more difficult to grasp. The Governance Committee of the Governing Board is responsible for improving both the Governing Board's own as well as the Foundations processes and has been working in parallel to fill the gaps: You can read the new description about what the tasks of Working Group Chairs are at https://matrix.org/foundation/governing-board/bylaws/02-bylaws/#working-group-chairs-and-vice-chairs-expectations. Tl;dr: if you really care about something getting done, then being the chair is your role for ensuring progress keeps getting made.
By the time you read this, you should be able to find documentation about the Trust and Safety working groups doing Research and Documentation as well as planning to support maintaining the matrix.org room directory on the working groups page.
If those interest you and you want to help out, feel free to join their public offices and introduce yourself! Sorry it took so long to set up and it will take a while longer until you see some output from those groups, but we are slowly organizing ourselves!
Please join us in welcoming < polycule >, a geeky and efficient Matrix client, as the newest Ecosystem Member of the Foundation! ✨
Does your community use Matrix? Or do you maintain a community project that builds on Matrix? Join the Foundation as a member! This helps us demonstrate the breadth of the ecosystem, and all members are entitled to participate in our Governing Board elections.
On Wednesday we pre-disclosed a major security update on the horizon (codename Hydra) to improve state resets and related federation issues in Matrix. This requires a coordinated security release across all Matrix servers, so that servers running in untrusted federations (e.g. the public Matrix network) can speak the upcoming new room version (v12).
We have just pushed back the date for the coordinated security release to Aug 11th 2025, as we've heard a lot of feedback that 6 days wasn't enough for clients/bots/bridge/tooling developers to test the changes introduced by room v12, and that it also doesn't give enough time for community admins to prepare for the necessary room upgrades. Underestimating the time needed here for client/community testing is entirely our fault, due to being overfocused on coordinating the significant serverside work needed. Pushing back the release date by 3 weeks gives everyone more time to test and prepare. We've also opened up registration on the beta.matrix.org homeserver, which is already running v12 rooms by default, to make it easier for client developers to test their clients. We've also made one clarification below for client developers, explaining the new permissions needed to send m.room.tombstone events.
Here's your weekly spec update! The heart of Matrix is the specification - and this is modified by Matrix Spec Change (MSC) proposals. Learn more about how the process works at https://spec.matrix.org/proposals.
🔗MSC highlight: Room IDs as hashes of the create event
You may have noticed some placeholder MSCs being opened in the past half a year. One of them has now received content ahead of the others:
MSC4291 redefines room IDs to be the hash of the m.room.create event. As a part of the change, the server name component is being removed. If any software you maintain assumes that the server name is present in room IDs, you should stop parsing room IDs or at least fail gracefully if the server name isn't there.
We're going to propose FCP on MSC4291 in the next few days and a new stable room version including that and other security-sensitive changes from the placeholder MSCs is expected to follow relatively soon as well.
Here's your weekly spec update! The heart of Matrix is the specification - and this is modified by Matrix Spec Change (MSC) proposals. Learn more about how the process works at https://spec.matrix.org/proposals.
This week we're thrilled to welcome Rocket.Chat as the newest Silver Member of the Foundation! We're grateful to say they are also sponsoring The Matrix Conference this year.
Matrix 1.15 is the latest release of the spec, bringing next-gen auth via OIDC, rich room topics, and room summaries to the ecosystem. All of these features have existed for quite a while in practice, but took a while to get through the final design and proposal stages. We're glad they're here though, and improving Matrix for everyone along the way.
Typically when a user is banned for 'spam', a bot or human operator will go forth and redact pretty much everything that user has ever sent in the room, so why not make that happen automatically? MSC4293: Redact on ban does just that, and was put up for proposed final comment period (FCP) this week. At this stage in the process the Spec Core Team (SCT) will be giving it more thorough review with an aim of including it in a future version of the spec - if you haven't already reviewed it, now would be a great time 🙂
Our second annual Governing Board election has come to a close! Huge thanks to all the candidates and voters. We're extremely grateful to everyone who served in the precedent-setting first cohort that we elected last year.
Special thanks to outgoing representatives Cleo Menezes Jr., Kevin Boos, Sumner Evans, and Thor Arne Johansen, congratulations to the incumbents who were re-elected, and welcome to our new incoming representatives, Christian Kußowski and Gnuxie! Find more info on our blog.
Earlier Today, the Matrix.org Foundation announced its plans to introduce Premium Accounts to fund the matrix.org homeserver. This requires little to no change for client developers.
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