IRC is so janky it’s almost definitely worth throwing it out at this point: - No standard authentication system, you have to go private message someone called

IRC is so janky it’s almost definitely worth throwing it out at this point: - No standard authentication system, you have to go private message someone called NickServ. - No chat history built in unless you run a bouncer. - A lot of weird legacy features with multiple ways to negotiate them (CAP, PROTOCTL, ISUPPORT, just assuming you can use something, etc.) - Inscrutable and incompatible user and channel modes across different IRCds. - No voice chat unless some client is implementing it via some kind of DCC command, and even then no multi-user voice chat and requires direct IP connection. - Horizontally scaling IRC is… interesting. If I were to even think about using IRC as a base, I would overhaul a significant amount of the protocol and break compatibility with a lot of existing applications! None of these are insurmountable problems but to fix then you would be inventing a lot of bespoke parts of the protocol!