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After evaluating a number of E2EE decentralized chat alternatives, the one I ended up *actually using* with all its warts is #XMPP.
#DeltaChat is technically very interesting and I will keep a close eye on it, but until its severe issues with group moderation are fixed, it's a non-starter for anyone wishing to run groups with more than a handful of users who know each other personally. Its back-end tech stack is also not any less rickety than XMPP setups, and isn't easier to deploy either.
@deutrino From my own experience, there's an unintuitive thing to know about E2EE #XMPP chat rooms - don't leave them for very long (more than severalish days), or the risk goes up that when you return, you won't get all the messages caught up (even though the server's retention policy would have you "deserving" them). Sometimes, some messages just don't propagate to you, silently. This non-delivery-after-prolonged-absence risk doesn't apply to "public", non-E2EE XMPP chatrooms.
@d1 yeah, there's really not one decentralized+E2EE (possible E2EE, not mandatory) that's a clear winner, and probably won't be for a while or ever...
@deutrino it's an absolutely brutal, tough-to-solve problem: E2EE in group chats, which are highly reliable, and distributed, and have group management/ACLs. Maybe several Von Neumann-grade geniuses will be fortuitously found in rural India, China, Poland, etc. who can work together and solve it.
@deutrino you are right about the public groups, not so much about the server deployment tho, I have even seen people here say that they host xmpp servers and that the chatmail server was easier to do, it is literally running a script
besides the official setup there are even other single-binary options like Maddy, Mox and Madmail
@adbenitez I hadn't heard of those single-binary options and I will look into them now, thanks!
my main reference regarding deployment was due to Chatmail's hard dependency on Debian 12, and the ease of messing up DNS settings which led to problems with a couple public servers I tested, and with a friend having problems with his test.
ultimately I'd like to be running my own permanent servers for Delta and XMPP. it seems like Delta has momentum and lack of fragmentation squarely in its favor.
@deutrino @adbenitez I too noticed the Debian 12 dependency. Normally, theis wouldn't bother me, but there were some challenging changes to postfix configs, when it goes from Debian 12 -> 13.
@deutrino fun fact: in the future you will be able to setup a chatmail relay without any domain or DNS at all!!! just an IP address, how cool is that??? it will lower the self-hosting barrier A LOT!!! stay tuned! 🤩
@adbenitez I will absolutely be staying tuned. you all are doing exciting work!
I know there are a number of relentless Delta Chat boosters out there, and I get it - it's very promising - but the group moderation issues aren't gonna fly in the real world. Period.
Now having said that, the two features in development with Delta Chat that I'm most excited about are multi-homing and webxdc. The project has real potential to surpass XMPP as it exists now in the real world and become a major contender in decentralized E2EE chat.
(I leave Matrix out of the conversation because my most recent "wait another 2 years and see if it's gotten any better" hasn't expired yet.)
gonna reply to this thread with urls for the quick reference of anyone reading it, since @adbenitez brought these to my attention. it turns out there are now multiple options for hosting a Chatmail server if you want to be part of the decentralized infrastructure of #DeltaChat:
Madmail, a fork of Maddy (see below) which appears to be optimized for use as a Chatmail server. written in Go. last release: 0.12.7, February 2026.
Maddy - "implements all functionality required to run a e-mail server. It replaces Postfix, Dovecot, OpenDKIM, OpenSPF, OpenDMARC and more with one daemon." written in Go. last release: 0.8.2, January 2026.
I didn't find documentation for deploying #Maddy as a #Chatmail relay, but I also only looked for like 2 minutes.
Mox - "For sending and receiving email. With support for IMAP4, SMTP, SPF, DKIM, DMARC, MTA-STS, DANE and DNSSEC, reputation-based and content-based junk filtering, Internationalization (EIA/IDNA), automatic TLS with ACME and Let's Encrypt, account autoconfiguration, webmail." written in Go. last release: 0.0.15, April 2025.
Appears to have a #Chatmail mode.
relevant: https://github.com/mjl-/mox/issues/251
