I eliminated the ability to run multiple home servers and forced clients to submit to the server so that every update was a git-style fast forward, eliminating the ability to have merges. (This means that messages could "fail", requiring a rebase + retry, just like git. Anyway, it works.)

You need a custom Matrix client to do that, which I built on top of the Rust crate.

But I didn't release any of it because MLS is exactly that + better (faster) crypto due to how key ratchets work for group members. So I added MLS' crypto to an existing chat implementation I had which already had all of the Matrix-style chat sync implemented, and dropped my Matrix client and backend. Haven't looked back.