Next Year It'll Be Half a Decade Since the Fall of Freenode (and IRC is Still Doing OK)
Related (a month ago): There Was Always Too Much 'Crazy Stuff' Going on Around Freenode
IRC is an open, free, transparent protocol. Lots of software implements it. Unlike the proprietary, centralised, monopolised ones, it'll turn 40 in a few years and it managed to endure all sorts of trouble. It's still widely used and it does not have many of the same issues we see in the Fediverse and Matrix. To be clear, IRC isn't perfect, but its simplicity helps*.
The "big IRC" networks do not grow [1, 2] and small ones are still surviving. "There are 461 known IRC networks listed below," says this index. The total has been more or less the same for half a decade already.
Next year around May it'll be 5 years since the "fall" of Freenode. As it turns out, contrary to what some people predicted, IRC endured and survived that event. Unlike the Web, IRC (which predates the Web) isn't really bloated. Our IRC network is still accessible using the exact same software that ran in Windows 3.x. That's 35 years ago. █
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* For instance, it does not preload images. If people do illegal things in IRC, then they can be reported to the police and taken to court (if they lie to the court, that's their problem and one of many problems with more to come soon).