Last time I checked user numbers were both steadily in decline, and small in absolute terms (top 10 IRC networks combined have ~500k users - compare to eg discord with 150 million users. There are individual discord servers with larger user numbers than the entire world of IRC)
> survived takeover attempts
Didn’t the takeover succeed, and then all the users migrated to a different server? I guess if you’re saying “IRC as an abstract concept survived the takeover of an individual network” then sure that happened.
> got a shiny new protocol spec with modern features
Perhaps I’m reading this chart wrong, but checking the IRCv3 feature support page, features that I would consider “modern by 80’s standards, table stakes by 90’s standards” (eg account registration, chat history) are still in the “draft” stage and not supported by libera.chat. Features from the 2000’s (eg mobile notifications) aren’t even being drafted?
If interoperable protocols really drove progress, Discord wouldn’t have attracted more users in 6 months than IRC did in 30 years :P
still alive and well, survived takeover attempts, see freenode -> libera.chat and got a shiny new protocol spec with modern features