Not to mention you can run a server on anything pretty much and for surprisingly big amount of users. Toaster or potatoes will do just fine.
I think there were two reasons for that. One was that without centralized server where element could flash nunbers in front of VC there would not be much funding just like other open source protocols like xmpp experience. It also attracted more people because you didn't have to think of servers or bother with the whole federation concept (just join the main server, as everyone is there already).
Additionally matrix is pretty good distributed database but imo horrible chat protocol. It's extremely heavy on resources making other small servers impossible to compete or run on the same terms as the big ones. Back in the days I was running one of the top 5 size matrix server but I realized that the ever growing database, load issues when users joining large rooms and ton of other problems all, I went back to xmpp. It made me realized how crazy expensive and unsustainable in long run was running essentially text chat app became, and that could be better spent elewhere. Matrix is basically not designed for the purpose it's pushed for. It might be great as a communication platform in a organization or corporation or government agency ( you can accurately track the room state from its inception so great to have an overview of who, when, what). For fedi-like chat servers XMPP which can run on a potatoe is much better choice. Both from financial perspective (as your small server joining a big room does not affect you cause you don't need to replicate the room state essentially killing your server), but also environmental (its light and scales depending on your community needs better).
You dont need to explain email so federation does not seem to be the issue here IMO. The problem is money which FLOSS projects usually don't have. The successful ones have perhaps enough so that the devs can put food on their table, but not much else. Most of the apps are after Dayjob hobby projects. It's hard to compete with those who have teams of paid staff.
Disroot founder here 👋 if you have any questions I would be glad to answer. Been doogfooding all services myself as primary communication means. We are small team of ethusiasts and we mainly reuse code writtem by awesome FLOSS contributors in form of services. Not reinventing wheel here. Next year we will celebrate 10 years of existance \o/
Yes. been following his work for over a year now. I am in the process of building my house but hopefully next year I will have more time to work on energy side of things. I plan to build solar collectors similar to the one from videos where you concentrate sunlight using mirrors and heatup oil. If I manage to get good results and warmup the oil to over 100C (400C should be possible), I plan to build sand-battery in the ground.
That's undoubtedly perk of having a house, parking or dedicated spot. But even without those at least here in NL infrastructure as is is pretty good even for those without didcated charging spot. I thin what should be easily done is slow charging spot on every parting spot. Cost wise it's not much and pulling max 2.5kw should not be much of an issue for the grid. In that way every car would have a dedicated charging to fill up over night if needed. Cost of such implementation wouldn't be to big either.
I think they are OK. When switching to it couple of years ago ifeared there will be no-one but was please tly suprised. For sure you do t have situation where most of the participants in the room are ghost accounts because presence actually works. So might look smaller but you are sure it's real users.