IRC Network OFTC is Shedding Off Servers
Down to 17
OFTC is no underdog or newcomer. It has been around for 2.5 decades. IRC has been around for nearly 4 decades.
Quantifying things in terms/numbers like "# of servers" overlooks the fact there are servers that can outperform other servers by a factor of 10 or more, but in OFTC's case it looks like they are decommissioning servers this year (or losing some).
In the case of Libera.Chat, which is usually but not always larger (OFTC is doing massive culls periodically), there have been issues with LLM slop this year. Moderators got fed up with chatbots and started culling users by the thousands. The number of servers remained the same.
IRC is still chugging along (steady for us and for many others). The number of unique networks known to netsplit.de actually grew lately. █