cross-posted from: https://leminal.space/post/40562232
From Fluxer’s updated roadmap on their website
See the polyproto website they linked here
I hadn’t heard of this protocol before, but the possibility of transferring accounts between homeservers sounds exciting!
Here’s the text from the screenshot:
Federation lets people on different instances talk to each other as if they were on the same service, the way email works across providers. Fluxer’s federation will be based on polyproto-core, a specification from the polyproto project, with our own extensions on top. polyproto is still young, and we hope that building a real implementation of it, and sharing what we learn, helps the specification mature and benefits everyone else who builds on it.
polyproto-core describes an identity that works across servers. Your identity is anchored on your home server and looks like name@domain. Behind it is a certificate that your home server signs over a key created on your device. To prove who you are to another server, your device signs a challenge from that server, so one identity works across servers and you don’t need a separate account on each. Messages are signed by the sender, so a server you visit can’t forge messages from you without being detected, as long as your home server and your device haven’t been compromised. The specification also defines how to move to a new home server.
polyproto-core is an early beta specification maintained by the Polyphony project. As of October 2026 it is at v1.0-beta.13. It focuses on identity and leaves message formats and chat features to extensions. We’ll write our own extensions for Fluxer’s features and propose changes to the protocol where they would help others too.
We’ll publish an experimental draft pull request in 2026 that you can try and give feedback on. The stable release follows in 2027. Until the draft is up, the discussion happens in Fluxer Labs, and you’re welcome to join in.
You can already sign in to several instances from one app. You sign in to each instance separately and switch between them. The mobile apps already support several instances and accounts, and the desktop app gets the same in early October 2026 with the update described in #2.
I’ve never been overly interested in fluxer, cuz matrix is much better than discord imo so I’m very happy with that, but polyproto is by far my fav federation protocol so this is super exciting anyway
These two things just aren’t directly comparable. You need an application to use Matrix, and there are only a handful that support all the features and of them, only a couple are stable and of those, none of them have a good (or any) UX for onboarding or administration or for channels with a large membership.
Element is the poster app for Matrix, but its clearly made by and for the people who design the protocol. Why do channels get an unread indicator when someone changes their name? Why must I see every time a user joins or leaves a room with no setting to turn it off for large rooms? Why can’t I turn off unread indicators for a room I really don’t care about constantly staying up to date on? How does the app even allow people to sign in without verifying their device cryptographically, so the app can announce to everyone else that they are an incomplete user? I can go on and on. I’m really liking Sable so far as an alternative, but it is constantly breaking and still suffers from some of the same issues as they’re just bound to the protocol.
I use these apps, I like them, but if they’re better than Discord to you then I’m happy, but you’re an edge case.
Sorry, you didn’t deserve this rant. Please forgive me. I hope fluxer (and matrix of course) does well and I am interested in how polyproto ends up working for it.
Personally my use cases for it are talking one on one to friends via text + voice calls + screen sharing, private (small) groups of friends, and occasionally keeping an eye on public spaces of projects I like. For those uses it’s been perfect for me, and much less frustrating than discord ever was. Even using vencord to unblock the streaming bitrate + disable as much bullshit as I could, discord was always a constant frustration to me with their incessant begging and nagging to get nitro or whatever else. Matrix just works, consistently and well imo, and I can say whatever I want to friends without a corporation having access to all of it. I’m sorry you haven’t enjoyed matrix, but as a lifelong discord hater matrix is everything I wished discord was back when I used it