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#TIL about #PolyProto;
"a protocol describing decentralized, federated data exchange using tried and true concepts ... Messages or posts you've sent in the past can be trivially migrated to a new account. This means: no more losing friends or followers if your old homeserver sunsets. Feel free to migrate to another homeserver at any time, even if your old homeserver has shut down ages ago."
Seems like a very new project, but this is an intriguing set of goals.
(1/2)
I'm impressed that the PolyProto devs have followed the Kalashnikov Principle. Their blog has a very thorough review of existing projects adjacent to what they're trying to create, and their pros and cons;
https://polyproto.org/blog/2026/01/02/prior-art/
Definitely aware of the risk of reinventing the wheel.
(2/2)
"We mention Zulip for its notable UX surrounding asynchronous communication organized by topic, where topics are themselves grouped into "channels".
As conversation threads tend to go off-topic after a while, a remarkable feature is the ability for moderators to post-facto move messages to different threads or topics, keeping things organized without enforcing that conversations rigidly remain on-topic all the time."
https://polyproto.org/blog/2026/01/02/prior-art/
(1/3)
@zulip sounds a bit like Discourse with a chat-style interface instead of a forum-style one. Which gets me to wondering, could federation be built via plugins as Discourse have done with ActivityPub
(2/3)
If there's a plugin architecture in place, plugins could be written for any protocol someone was motivated to develop for;
* XMPP for interop with Movim
* AP with the threadiverse (Lemmy, Discourse, nodeBB, etc)
* Matrix with SchildiChat
* ATProto with Roomy
Communities using Zulip could decide if they want to use any of these, and which one(s). Without being thrown into any of these networks unawares, just by creating a Zulip space.
(3/3)
"We explicitly wish to avoid Matrix's dreaded "unable to decrypt message" issue, which most new users run into and are frequently confused by."
@polyproto, 2026
https://polyproto.org/blog/2026/01/02/prior-art/
This is old news. I used to strike UtDs frequently. Matrix blogs claim that various parts of Matrix 2.0 fix this, and I haven't seen a UtD for a year or 2.
(I'm using ElementX with the matrix.org homeserver, SchildiChat with the iridescent.nz homeserver, and Element Desktop with both)
