But IRC is also looking back on three decades of completely separate networks without even the tiniest bridge and the number of networks that have grown big eno

But IRC is also looking back on three decades of completely separate networks without even the tiniest bridge and the number of networks that have grown big enough that users forget that other irc networks exist has been been increasing ever since. Yes, they do share roughly the same protocol, yes, clients can be connected to more than one of the networks at the same time, yes, most (all?) of the big networks are federated within themselves on the server side. IRC itself is an example of existing side by side.