This is precisely what happens. The matrix.org bridge has approximately 25k open client connections to freenode. It would probably be a good idea to switch it t

This is precisely what happens. The matrix.org bridge has approximately 25k open client connections to freenode. It would probably be a good idea to switch it to server-server connections to save resources, but afaict nobody has experimented with that yet. If you've ever seen users with an [m] at the end of their names, that's the default name for bridged matrix users.