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.
XMPP and Matrix exist, “hey let’s reinvent the wheel”
They both have existed for a very long time, and yet people flock to Discord by the millions. Why do you suppose that is?
they corralled to it like they’re corralled to piefed, facebook, etc.
Matrix is aimed at enterprise sized organizations and it shows.
As far as I am concerned, fluxer fills the niche of the bridge between open protocols and discord for normies. Xmpp doesn’t have clients for all major OS’s and matrix is finicky if you care about the voice and video side of things.
XMPP clients: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_von_XMPP-Clients
?
We run matrix voice and video calls daily on a self hosted federated instance. It’s a non issue.
The biggest issue I’ve had with element calls specifically is no audio on screen shares, they keep claiming it’s fixed, but there are a lot of setups that don’t allow it, of which mine is included. I don’t know if other call protocols have better luck, but fluxer has been solid for it since I started using it.
For which major OS there’s no XMPP client?
Disclaimer: I host and use XMPP. I like using it.
That being said: the question isn’t if there’s any client, the question is if there’s a good client.
And my god, do XMPP clients suck ass. At best, they’re decent (monocles comes to mind, for example), but I actively loathe interacting with Linux desktop XMPP clients. There’s not a single one that is competently designed, or rather, they are all so fucking bare-bones and ugly looking.
“But that doesn’t matter!” yes it does shut the fuck up.
99% of the population doesn’t give a shit if you support the latest OMEMO spec or are written in memory safe rust or whatever else.
It takes a a fraction of a second to realize “this client sucks” and at most an additional minute to figure out “…and it’s not suited to my use-case”.
I also host matrix and use it extensively on all my devices. There actually are nice clients, and even some Discord-likes. But a) the protocol is so horrible, I’m not sure reinventing the wheel can be called a bad thing, and b) I want to cry once a week at least when using it. Why do my old messages not load today? Why does my message show as sent two weeks ago (!), but only arrived now (!) despite having sent plenty of messages both directions in between? Why are all of my messages marked as “can’t verify authenticity” on about half my devices, but not the other, a bug that has been open for YEARS with hundreds of complaints and pleas to at least reduce the danger-signaling indicator since it indicates “insecure!” to non-expert users, with zero maintained response? And this is just for myself, fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck supporting matrix for friends & family. I mean, I am doing that, but fuuuuuuuuck thaaaaat.
Fluxer allows us to tell friends and family “here try this, it’s just like discord but no corporate bullshit!”, and they can open the app and go “oh yeah that is like Discord. Ok, sure, we can try using that instead”.
TempleOS?