Reviewers noted that other attempts at defining an open instant messaging or multimedia signalling protocol of this type had difficulties becoming widely adopted—e.g.

[10][11] In 2015, a subsidiary of Amdocs was created, named "Vector Creations Limited", and the Matrix staff was moved there.

[12] In July 2017, the funding by Amdocs was announced to be cut and in the following weeks the core team created their own UK-based company, "New Vector Limited",[13] which was mainly built to support the development of Matrix and Riot, which was later renamed to Element.

[14] During this time period, there were multiple calls for support to the community and companies that build on Matrix,[15] to help pay for the wages of at least part of the core team.

Patreon and Liberapay crowdfunding accounts were created,[16] and the core team started a video podcast, called Matrix "Live" to keep the contributors up to speed with ongoing developments.

[26] Work on the application based on Riot and Matrix protocol—called Tchap [fr] after French scientist Claude Chappe—had started in early 2018,[27] and the program was open-sourced and released on iOS and Android in April 2019.

[35] In December 2019, German Ministry of Defense announced a pilot project called BwMessenger for secure instant messaging tool based on Matrix protocol, Synapse server and Riot application.

The long-term goal of the Federal Government is the secure use of messenger services that covers all ministries and subordinate authorities.

The protocol supports security and replication, maintaining full conversation history, with no single points of control or failure.

[3] Client software is available for open-federated Instant Messaging (IM), voice over IP (VoIP) and Internet of Things (IoT) communication.

The Matrix standard specifies RESTful HTTP APIs for securely transmitting and replicating JSON data between Matrix-capable clients, servers and services.

The Olm library provides for optional end-to-end encryption on a room-by-room basis via a Double Ratchet Algorithm implementation.

[65] Reasons for choosing Matrix included federated identity management, which allows to reuse the existing identity infrastructure into the new chat system; the decentralized architecture, which allows cross-linking data from disparate sources; and the open protocol, which ensures interoperability and future-proof data exchange and prevents vendor lock-in.

[69] The server is sized for half a million pupils and deployed on kubernetes and the client was enhanced with features such as read receipt for parents or polls by fairkom.,[70] who became a silver partner of the Matrix foundation in 2023.

[71] Luxembourg has developed a Matrix-based chat service for government officials, named Luxchat4Gov, planned to be released in the second quartal of 2023.

[75][76][77] The hosting is provided by Element Matrix Services, which publishes the technical details for public review soon after the event.