Now that there are a few Matter bridges available (SwitchBot Hub 2, several aqara models, a Tuya model sold under the zemismart name, etc), I am seeing a lot of confusion about “matter hubs.“
Technically, there are no matter hubs, because hubs operate at the network transport level, and matter operates a layer above that at the application level. wi-Fi is still Wi-Fi, Thread is Still Thread, zigbee is still Zigbee: matter doesn’t change any of that.
What it changes is being able to use multiple apps and multiple voice assistants with the same device at the same time without needing special integrations.
In order to make this work, what matter does have is “matter commissioners,” “matter controllers,” and “matter bridges.”
I wrote a detailed post about this in the following thread:
Nanoleaf Essentials won't connect to Smartthings - #13 by JDRoberts