Bring Matters long-form publishing into the Fediverse.

What it is

Matters is a long-running, open-source, interoperable IPFS-protocol publishing site and censorship-resistant community-governance platform with more than 280,000 registered users. The Fediverse is an open social network of interoperable servers and applications, including Mastodon, Misskey, GoToSocial, Threads, and others.

Matters Fediverse Gateway connects those two worlds. It lets Fediverse users follow Matters publishing, read full public long-form articles as ActivityPub Article objects, reply, like, and boost. Those interactions can flow back into Matters. Paid articles, encrypted articles, private content, and messages stay outside federation.

Matters main-site flow

The concrete case is the Matters main site. A public article starts on matters.town, moves through the IPFS/IPNS-oriented static publisher, becomes an ActivityPub seed bundle, and is then canonicalized by the gateway for discovery and interaction.

Try the prototype

The live Cloudflare Worker prototype demonstrates the read-side federation surface with ActivityPub and NodeInfo JSON served from narrow routes on the Matters domain. The canonical demo actor is acct:matters@matters.town. The demo article is represented as an ActivityPub Article, not reduced to a short-form note.

The isolated Worker testbed remains available at gateway-demo.matters.town for edge-runtime diagnostics without touching the main-site root route.

The static GitHub Pages prototype remains available for the seed-bundle surface: WebFinger, actor, outbox, Article, seed manifest, seed outbox, and NodeInfo.

This is not a production service. It does not accept real user content. The Worker currently demonstrates ActivityPub content types, edge routing, seed bundle exposure, and the future signed inbox pass-through path to gateway-core.

ActivityPub seed bundle

The seed bundle is the contract between ipns-site-generator and gateway-core. The static publisher should only emit public data that is safe to federate. The gateway then rewrites that seed into canonical ActivityPub identity and runtime state.

The public boundary is part of the data contract: paid, encrypted, private, draft, and message-like content must be excluded before the seed bundle is generated.

Architecture

matters.town public article
        |
        v
ipns-site-generator
        |
        +-- HTML / RSS / JSON Feed / IPFS-IPNS output
        |
        +-- ActivityPub seed bundle
              |
              v
Cloudflare Worker edge
        |
        +-- WebFinger / NodeInfo / cached actor reads
        |
        +-- signed inbox pass-through
              |
              v
gateway-core runtime
        |
        +-- HTTP signatures / followers / delivery queue
        +-- moderation / audit / alerts / recovery
              |
              v
Mastodon / Misskey / GoToSocial / other Fediverse servers

Static + dynamic split: public article output remains durable through the IPFS/IPNS-oriented publishing layer. The gateway handles the dynamic social layer: discovery, inbox handling, followers, delivery state, moderation, and recovery. The proposed integration contract and Worker deployment path are documented in the IPNS gateway plan.

Current status

• Public ActivityPub prototype endpoints are live: WebFinger, actor, outbox, Article, seed bundle, and NodeInfo.
• Cloudflare Worker edge implementation is deployed for correct ActivityPub content types, edge routing, seed bundle exposure, and future runtime pass-through.
• 85 automated tests passed in the latest recorded local verification snapshot.
• Black-box interoperability checks completed with Mastodon surfaces, including successful exact discovery and inbound follow delivery from g0v.social.
• SQLite persistence plus backup, restore, reconcile, and replay tooling are in place.
• Webhook dispatch exists for metrics, alerts, logs, and Slack incoming webhooks.

Roadmap

The full roadmap is in development-plan.

Technical decisions

Learn more