[CameronNemo]

Maybe you are confused because the old client name, Riot, was sunset in favor of Element?

AIUI the protocol was and is called Matrix. There seems to be no intention to depart from that name.

[hparadiz]

They renamed Riot to Element in the wake of the George Floyd protests in the United States. It's the same code base.

Matrix is a protocol. Synapse is the primary server implementation of Matrix written in Python.

[Arathorn]

(We actually renamed Riot to Element because the nice people at Riot Games sent us a cease & desist :)

[Macha]

Here's their blog post at a time: https://element.io/blog/the-world-is-changing/?ref=itsfoss.c...

It's worth nothing that the conflict with Riot Games over trademark rights was also a motivating factor.