Decentralized Communication With Rocket.Chat Native Federation

Data sovereignty & security

Each workspace maintains full ownership of its data. Messages, files, and room state are stored locally and shared only when necessary, enabling secure cross-organization communication without giving up control to third-party servers.

Access control

Access to federated communication in Rocket.Chat is currently controlled through workspace permissions. Users must be explicitly granted the access-federation permission in order to send and receive messages in federated rooms. This ensures that participation in federation can be limited to approved users only.

Built-in homeserver, no external components

Native Federation runs directly inside Rocket.Chat, simplifying deployment and removing the need for external Synapse servers, extra databases, or standalone components.

Lower total cost of ownership (TCO) & reduced complexity

Organizations using traditional federation stacks often manage multiple external components, such as a Synapse Python server paired with a dedicated PostgreSQL database. Native Federation eliminates this multi-component architecture, reducing maintenance overhead, operational complexity, and long-term infrastructure costs.

Guaranteed performance baseline

Because the homeserver is built directly into Rocket.Chat, the platform can optimize performance holistically. Native Federation is designed to achieve high SLA targets with minimal resource consumption, providing predictable performance without the heavy footprint of external homeserver deployments.

Cross-organization collaboration

Teams can communicate with external partners, vendors, agencies, or customers while keeping their internal workspace separate and secure. Federated rooms allow distributed groups to collaborate seamlessly.

Interoperability through open standards

Built on the Matrix protocol, Native Federation supports communication between Rocket.Chat and other Matrix-based platforms, ensuring long-term compatibility and flexibility.

Independent infrastructure

Each server operates as its own autonomous system. If one workspace goes offline or loses connectivity, other servers continue operating without disruption.

Future-proof collaboration

As Matrix evolves, federation capabilities will continue expanding, bringing more secure and interoperable features to Rocket.Chat.

Messaging

Send, receive, edit, and delete messages across federated servers, with consistent delivery and synchronization.

Message interactions

Native Federation aims to support a wide range of message interaction features to keep conversations consistent across homeservers.

• Reactions: Users can add emoji reactions to messages in federated rooms.

• Mentions: Users can mention local and remote participants within a federated room.

• Quotes: Users can quote previous messages when responding in federated rooms.

• Threads: Users can reply in threads to organize conversations.

Direct messaging across servers

Start one-to-one conversations with users on external domains with full invitation handling and membership lifecycle support.

Typing indicators

Federated rooms may display typing indicators when remote users are composing a message.

Federated group rooms

Create rooms containing both local and remote users, with synchronized membership events.

Federated invitations

Invite remote users to direct messages and group rooms. Invitation acceptance, decline, and membership updates are synchronized across all participating servers.

Room management

Update room details such as name and topic and synchronize changes across federated servers.

Room role & membership synchronization

Maintain consistent roles and membership across homeservers, including owners, moderators, and members.

File sharing

Share files between federated users within supported size limits (50 MB).

End-to-End Encryption

Not supported

Encrypted rooms and messages cannot be exchanged between federated servers.

Public room discovery

Not supported

Searching or browsing public rooms hosted on other homeservers is unavailable.

Message history backfill

Partial / configurable support not available

Remote users can access existing room history after joining, but administrators cannot yet control or restrict whether history is visible to newly joined users. History access is always enabled until configuration options are introduced.

Read receipts

Not supported

Read receipts are intentionally suppressed in federated rooms to prevent inconsistent or misleading indicators.

Voice / video calls

Not supported

Audio and video calling are disabled in federated rooms.

Auto-translation

Local only

Translated messages do not propagate to remote servers.

Discussions

Not supported (will be restricted)

While Discussions may currently appear to work in federated rooms, they are not supported by the Matrix protocol and will be disabled in future releases to prevent inconsistent or unreliable behavior.

File upload size limits

Limited

Files above 50 MB may not propagate to remote servers; large files remain local.

Room & user deletion

Not synchronized

Deleting rooms or users locally does not remove them on remote servers. Full federation of deletion events is planned after Beta.

Slash commands

Partially supported

/invite-all-from is not supported and may break synchronization.

Legacy federation (synapse-based)

Not supported

Rooms created under the old external-homeserver approach will not function with Native Federation.

Matrix protocol version

Limited

Rocket.Chat currently supports Matrix v.11, not newer versions.