Are there any data on how federated is Matrix? I mean number of users on different servers.
From my experience most of people are on matrix.org server and even if they run their own homeservers the identity server is still vector.im.
The identity server is used ONLY for mapping email addresses and phone numbers to matrix IDs, and is strictly optional, so I'm not sure it counts as centralisation. We are also hoping to remove it entirely from the mix in future (switching to storing 3pid->mxid mappings per room instead).
[0]: https://rosenzweig.io/blog/the-federation-fallacy.html
As for identity server, it was just surprising for me (from user's perspective) that when my friends ran a homeserver I still needed a lot of config on Riot for Android to connect to (homeserver URL, identity server URL). I've seen some well-known URIs [1] but sadly Riot for Android did not query them for my e-mail.
[1]: https://f-droid.org/.well-known/matrix/client
Thanks for your work on Matrix, glad that you guys are pushing the boundaries of UX of open-source software!
For 'the federation fallacy' thing: our approach is to first decentralise accounts (so you can transparently move them between servers), at which we can turn off matrix.org (or at least disable signup) assuming there are enough other quality public servers available to incorporate the resulting diaspora. In the longer term, we want to enable P2P in Matrix so you don't even need a server at all if you don't want it, at which point the federation fallacy argument entirely falls apart :)
and thanks for the thanks! :)
Let's compete.