Status

• 2022-06-10: this document was filled in awaiting review by IT admins.
• 2022-05-13: this document is actively getting drafted. It’s relevant currently given that PL EngRes is rehoming to FIL Slack but will be bridging many channels to Matrix (read more here). The structure of this document is largely based on related efforts for FIL Slack: Filecoin Slack Admin Guide and Filecoin Slack User Guide.

Purpose

The purpose of this document is to have a durable place regarding IPFS Matrix Homeserver documentation, both for users and administrators.

Background

Historically IPFS and related project has used Freenode for text chat. With the freenode collapse in 2021, IPFS established a more prominent Matrix presence. The IPFS project spun up its own homeserver hosted via Element Matrix Servicees (EMS) at ipfs.ems.host for the purposes of:

1. Control over admin accounts. For example, even if an account that has Administrator privileges in one of our rooms is compromised, we can log in via the EMS management console and deactivate the account.
2. Branding

In this document, we will use Matrix terminology:

• Room - This is what is usually called a “channel” in other chat platforms. It’s a conceptual place where users can send and receive events.
• Space - This is a collection of Rooms.
• Homeserver - This is where a user's client connects to, and it stores the communication history and account information for that user, and shares data with the wider Matrix ecosystem by synchronizing communication history with other homeservers.

The Matrix FAQ provides a good overview of the Matrix system and terminology.

Usecases

Join rooms on the IPFS homeserver

1. You need to have have a Matrix account.
   1. You can create a matrix.org account using the Element web application here.
      1. matrix.org accounts are the easiest to get started with, but you can use another homeserver as well.
   2. You don’t need an ipfs.io homeserver account, and in fact, we are avoiding creating them per [Why do some folks have ipfs.io instead of matrix.org Matrix accounts?](https://pl-strflt.notion.site/Why-do-some-folks-have-ipfs-io-instead-of-matrix-org-Matrix-accounts-24ce71f810e44cd0aeb82ad000f9803d)