Decentralised Communication
Bonfire: Modular Communication Tools on the Open Social Web
February 1, 2026
2:45 PM – 3:15 PM Add to calendar
2:45 PM – 3:15 PM Add to calendar
AW1.126
<p>Bonfire is a next-generation, open-source platform for building trustful communities and federated networks. It reimagines social communication by allowing communities to enable, disable, or adapt features and even protocols, putting community governance, and autonomy combined with consentful interconnection at its core. Bonfire federates with ActivityPub, with bridging available to ATproto (and hopefully more to come). Bonfire’s federated groups, thread-centric discussions, and modular architecture make it easy to experiment with new forms of moderation, identity, and trust that reach beyond single servers, single platforms, or single protocols. </p>
<p>This talk will cover:</p>
<ul>
<li>
<p>Our ongoing work and demo of fully <strong>end-to-end encrypted messaging</strong> (MLS-based) over ActivityPub, one the first two implementations of its kind</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>ActivityPub C2S API use: <strong>how apps can easily integrate with the fediverse</strong> (including MLS messaging) via Bonfire </p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Interoperability: <strong>extending ActivityPub</strong> for advanced user stories, moderation, as well as <strong>bridging</strong> with ATproto and potential future integrations with Matrix, XMPP, etc.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Consentful communication flows and privacy-preserving tools for <strong>trust and safety</strong> (such as circles and boundaries)</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Bonfire’s <strong>modular architecture</strong>: designing “app flavours” with custom governance, moderation, and communication tools for different community needs</p>
</li>
</ul>
<p>Attendees will see a live demo and leave with ideas and tools for composing their own modular, federated, and privacy-focused social communication spaces.</p>
<p>Links: </p>
<p>Links:<br />
- <a href="https://bonfirenetworks.org">Project</a>
- <a href="https://docs.bonfirenetworks.org">Docs</a>
- <a href="https://github.com/bonfire-networks">Code</a>
- <a href="https://docs.bonfirenetworks.org/federation-interoperability.html">Interop & FEP/Protocol extensions</a></p>
Additional information
| Live Stream | https://live.fosdem.org/watch/aw1.126 |
|---|---|
| Type | devroom |
| Language | English |
More sessions
| 2/1/26 |
<p>Draupnir is a unified platform to grow, manage, and sustain communities on Matrix. Over the last 3 years we have learned many lessons to share with the community on building trust and safety tooling in an open federation.</p> <p>We will discuss just a few of the many problems we have faced, and our experience solving them </p> <p>https://github.com/the-draupnir-project/Draupnir</p>
|
| 2/1/26 |
<p>Policy servers (<a href="https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-spec-proposals/pull/4284">MSC4284</a>) are a new tool available to communities on Matrix to help reduce spam and other unwelcome content, but they aren't the only option. Communities have a whole suite of tools available to them to keep their users safe, such as moderation bots and in-client safety features.</p> <p>In this talk, we'll cover the layers of Trust & Safety (T&S) tooling available to communities, how they work, ...
|
| 2/1/26 |
<p>As protocols and platforms grow, so do the demands of policy enforcement, human review workflows, and cross-platform incident response. Trust and safety tools form this critical layer of Internet infrastructure, yet most solutions remain closed, proprietary, and reinvented in isolation. Further, they’re typically out of reach for smaller and decentralized platforms.</p> <p><a href="https://roost.tools">Robust Open Online Safety Tools (ROOST)</a> is building a different future: one where ...
|
| 2/1/26 |
<p>An overview of all that's been happening with the Matrix protocol in the last year, including:</p> <ul> <li> <p>Project Hydra (state resolution improvements)</p> </li> <li> <p>Trust & Safety improvements</p> </li> <li> <p>Matrix 2.0 MSCs (OIDC, Simplified Sliding Sync, Matrix RTC and Invisible Crypto)</p> </li> <li> <p>P2P Matrix progress</p> </li> <li> <p>Encryption advances with MLS, post quantum</p> </li> <li> <p>Updates on the scores of public sector Matrix deployments we're seeing ...
|
| 2/1/26 |
<p><a href="https://github.com/element-hq/element-web">Element Web</a> is the oldest and most widely deployed Matrix client, and could well be the most widely deployed decentralised comms client in active service, especially when considering its many forks (Tchap, openDesk Chat, BundesMessenger, SchildiChat, LuxChat, etc.)</p> <p>Over the last 11 years it has accumulated a very significant amount of technical debt, and we believe that one of the main ways to accelerate the uptake of ...
|
| 2/1/26 |
<p>Discover how MatrixRTC transforms into a "backendless" multiplayer game server and join us for a live Godot game session inside a Matrix widget.</p> <p>The VOIP team at Element will present their progress on abstracting an RTC SDK from the Element Call stack. We want to share the current state as we try to use it to build a multi-player game.</p> <p>If you are familiar with Godot, you will learn how to potentially use Matrix as a free, encrypted backend that handles account creation and ...
|
| 2/1/26 |
<p>Element is the most widely deployed Matrix client, built by the team who created Matrix in order to bootstrap the ecosystem. The last few years have been quite a rollercoaster in terms of figuring out how to ensure Element can contribute to Matrix sustainably long-term - a problem faced by many open source projects whose core team works on the project as their day job.</p> <p>The good news is we think we've now found a sustainable model that works, having moved from Apache to AGPL and having ...
|
