As we've seen from XMPP and Matrix federation comes with it's own set of tradeoffs. Matrix (specifically the element client) has come very far but it's still not at a state where I can reccomended it to non technical acquaintances.
Perhaps you tried it before key cross-signing? In that case, you had to verify each of your devices with each of your participants devices. Now you only need to verify once per participant. It's much better now in general.
