Hey everyone! We’re excited to announce that Pawb Social now has its own Matrix server at matrix.pawb.social! This is a big step for our community — a federated, decentralized chat platform that we control, built for all of us. If you’ve been using Discord and are wondering what this is all about, read on! We’ve put together everything you need to know to get started.

What is Matrix?

Matrix is an open, decentralized communication protocol — think of it like email, but for chat. Just like you can email someone on Gmail from a Yahoo account, Matrix lets you chat with anyone on any Matrix server from your account on ours. Servers talk to each other through federation, meaning you’re never locked into one provider. This concept is very similar to the Fediverse, which you are already making use of here with Lemmy, Mastodon, and other such services.

Matrix supports:

• Direct messages and group chats, called “rooms”
• Spaces, which work like Discord servers, organizing rooms under one umbrella
• End-to-End Encryption (E2EE), which allows for private conversations that even server admins can’t read
• Voice and video calls (Soon, currently Pawb Matrix doesn’t support this)
• File sharing, reactions, stickers, threads, and more

If you’re coming from Discord, a lot of this will feel familiar. The biggest difference is that you own your experience, and no single corporation controls the platform.

Getting Started

Sign In with Your Existing Pawb Account

You don’t need to create a new account. Our Matrix server uses Single Sign-On (SSO), which means if you already have an account on pawb.social, pawb.fun or furry.engineer, you can sign right in.

• Open matrix.pawb.social
• Click on “Continue with SSO”
• Choose the Pawb account you’d like to use to log in

When you log in for the first time via SSO, a Matrix account will be automatically created for you. Easy!

Open the Web Client

Our default web client is Cinny, which provides a familiar, Discord-like experience. If you’ve used Discord before, you’ll feel right at home: Cinny has a similar layout with a server/space list on the left, channels (rooms) in the middle, and a member list on the right.

Verify your Session

Whenever you sign in to a client, no matter which one, you’ll want to set up your security keys right away. This will make your conversations private.

If you are confused about what security keys are, this will be explained later in the “Device Verification & End-to-End Encryption (E2EE)” section. For now, just follow the next steps.

Cinny should have a red button in the bottom left corner that, when clicked, will prompt you to verify your device.

If you are using another client, you may be prompted to do this automatically, or you may need to go into Settings → Devices to start the process manually.

You’ll be asked to create a Security Key (also called a recovery key) or a Security Phrase. Do this as soon as possible and save your security key/phrase somewhere safe. This is your backup if you ever lose access to all your devices — without it, you could lose access to your encrypted message history permanently.

Join Some Rooms and Spaces

Once you’re in, look for our community Spaces — the Matrix equivalent of a Discord server. Inside each Space, you’ll find rooms (like Discord channels) for different topics.

Our Pawb Space should be visible to you automatically in the “Explore Community” button on the sidebar, and you can otherwise visit #pawb:pawb.social with Cinny by clicking on “🔗 Join with Address” (your friends from other servers can visit our Pawb Matrix this way too). After joining, you should see all our official Pawb rooms!

We also recommend visiting other Matrix servers and spaces hosted by furries. They are listed in:

• matrix.squirrel.rocks/furry_servers
• furrymatrix.info/

You may also look at what a different Matrix server provides by going to “Explore Community” and clicking on “+ Add Server”, or create your own Spaces.

With your new Matrix account on pawb.social, you can now talk to other furries in bark.lgbt or squirrel.rocks for example!

Navigating Cinny

Since Cinny is our default client, here’s a quick orientation. It uses a three-column layout that should feel familiar if you’ve used Discord:

• Left sidebar (narrow icon bar) — This is your navigation hub. At the top you’ll find icons for Home (your overview and direct messages), People (DM list), and your Spaces (which show up as icons, just like Discord’s server list). At the bottom you’ll find Search, Bookmarks, and your profile/settings.
• Middle panel — When you select a Space from the left sidebar, this panel shows you all the rooms within that Space (like Discord’s channel list). You’ll see room names organized under headings, and if the Space has categories (like “Rooms” or “Admin Zone”), they’ll appear here as collapsible sections. This is also where the Lobby, Message Search, and other Space-level features live.
• Right panel (main area) — This is where the active conversation lives. You’ll see the message history, user messages with avatars and timestamps, and the message input bar at the bottom. The room name and description appear at the top. You can react to messages, reply, and more using the action buttons that appear when you hover over a message.

Cinny supports Markdown formatting in messages. You can turn it on and off and discover keyboard shortcuts for them by clicking the “Aa” button.

Custom stickers and emojis are a large portion of furry expression. We provide some by default in the #stickers:pawb.social room. You can join our sticker room, click on your profile picture in the bottom left corner, Emojis & Stickers, and Select Pack to enable our room stickers for all rooms. In the same general area you may also add any images, videos and gifs to your global Default Pack too.

Other furries from other servers have made their own sticker pack rooms as well, which you can see in matrix.squirrel.rocks/stickers.

Choosing a Client (Desktop & Mobile)

One of the great things about Matrix is that you’re not locked into one app. You can use any compatible client, and your messages stay in sync across all of them. Here are some options:

• Cinny (Web/Desktop) — Our default. Discord-like layout, clean and intuitive.
• FluffyChat (Desktop/Android/iOS) — The most mature mobile client.
• Nheko (Desktop) — A very featureful desktop client with a traditional interface. Releases slowly, so you might want to try the nightlies. Has a tray icon.
• Commet (Web/Desktop/Android) - Fast and has cool features like replying with stickers, feels like Discord. Promising, but very new, and doesn’t support adding stickers/emojis.
• Element (Desktop/Android/iOS) — The flagship Matrix client. We don’t recommend it since its interface may feel overwhelming and it doesn’t support emoji reactions/stickers like the other clients, but it is capable of using widgets (embedded web pages running services like Jitsi or Etherpad), if that’s your thing. Has a tray icon.

You can use multiple clients at the same time: sign into Cinny on your desktop and FluffyChat on your phone, and everything stays synced.

Device Verification & End-to-End Encryption (E2EE)

This is one of the most important things to understand about Matrix, especially if you value privacy. Please read this section carefully.

What is E2EE?

End-to-End Encryption means that messages are encrypted on your device and can only be decrypted and viewed by the people you talk to. Not even the server admins can read E2EE messages. Many rooms (especially DMs) are encrypted by default.

What is Device Verification?

Matrix E2EE is tied to your devices (each browser session, app, or client counts as a separate device). To ensure that your encrypted messages are actually going to you and not an impersonator, Matrix uses a system called cross-signing and device verification.

This is done with the use of keys that can be used to decrypt your messages. When you initially verify your new Matrix account, you are prompted to generate a security key. Save and store it somewhere safe and accessible only by you. Write it down, save it in a password manager, whatever works for you.

Verified devices have access to your message history, and unverified devices do not, instead showing “Unable to decrypt message” in place of any messages. This is expected; if someone else manages to log in to your account, they won’t be able to see any of your previous messages! This also means that if you log out or lose access to all your devices and your security key, you will permanently lose access to your previous messages. Hence the importance of saving your security key.

Verifying a New Device

When you sign into a new device (say, FluffyChat on your phone after already using Cinny on your desktop), you’ll need to verify it. This usually works one of two ways:

• Interactive verification — If you’re already signed in on another device, the new device will ask you to verify it from your existing session. You’ll typically compare a set of emojis on both screens and confirm they match. This proves both devices are controlled by you.
• Security Key/Phrase — If you don’t have another active session handy, you can verify the new device using the Security Key or Security Phrase you saved during initial setup.

It’s a little more involved than Discord’s approach, but it means your private conversations are actually private. It’s worth the effort.

Why Move Away from Discord?

We know some of you might be wondering: “Discord works fine, why bother?”

That’s a fair question. Here’s why this matters:

Discord is about to get a lot more invasive. Discord is rolling out requirements for ID verification and/or highly intrusive age verification in order to continue using the platform. For a community like ours where many members value their privacy and participate under a fursona or pseudonym — being forced to hand over government-issued identification or submit to invasive verification just to chat with friends is a dealbreaker. This is a direct threat to the privacy and safety of our community members, and it’s one of the primary reasons we’re building our own home on Matrix now rather than waiting until it’s too late.

Discord is centralized. That means one company controls everything — your account, your data, your communities, and the rules. If Discord decides to change its terms of service, shut down a server, or ban an account, there’s no appeal to a higher authority. Entire communities have been wiped out overnight with no recourse. For marginalized communities like ours in the furry fandom, that risk is real and ever-present.

Matrix is federated and decentralized. Our server, matrix.pawb.social, is ours. We run it, we set the rules, and we control our own data. But because Matrix is federated, we’re not isolated — we can still communicate with anyone on any other Matrix server across the globe. If we ever needed to move, our community wouldn’t be at the mercy of a single company’s decisions.

Matrix is open source. The protocol, the servers, and the clients are all built on open standards. Anyone can audit the code. Anyone can run a server. Nobody can lock you in or take it away.

Moving to Matrix is about community sovereignty — knowing that the digital space we’ve built together actually belongs to us and can’t be pulled out from under our feet. It’s about building something that lasts, on our terms.

Other resources

If you would like to watch a general tutorial video on how to start getting into Matrix as a beginner, this video from Techlore serves as a great introduction. Please do note that not everything he covers will apply to the Pawb Matrix instance, due to differences in default front-end, sign-in options, supported features, etc. Regardless, it still can help new beginners who are looking to learn about Matrix in a video format.

We also recommend these furry resources:

• matrix.squirrel.rocks/
• furrymatrix.info/

Special Thanks

A huge shout-out to Joshua Kimsey for creating the Lemmy SSO Bridge! Lemmy doesn’t natively support Single Sign-On, so this project was vital in making our seamless SSO experience possible across the Pawb Social network. If you appreciate being able to sign into Matrix with your existing Pawb account, Joshua’s work is a big reason why. Go give the project a star if you get a chance! ⭐

We’re thrilled to have this up and running, and we can’t wait to see you all on there. If you have questions, drop them in the comments and we’ll help you out!

See you on Matrix! 🐾

- Post created by Southern Wolf, Edited by Herzenschein