It's not decentralized because it's federated, client-server chat software. This is more decentralized than Discord or what-have-you, but it requires reliance on multiple centralized internet services and authorities, as I outlined.

I'm well aware that FOSS projects tend to be underfunded. Matrix is an outlier with some large grants fueling the project and opaque organizational structure.

> What you seem to want is a peer-to-peer solution, which at this point in time is not something Matrix has built or claims to have built.

Peer-to-peer is not absolutely necessary (it can be both). There's nothing wrong with routing message through a network, but e2ee is absolutely necessary, and it took until May this year for Matrix to enable that feature by default. Most importantly, in Matrix, your identity is associated with and controlled by a homeserver. It's under someone else's control. That's not good... Your identity should be under your control. We've known how to do this with asymmetric encryption for at least a couple of decades.