@xgranade A great example of this is DeltaChat being essentially ideal at replacing the "group chat with friends" part of the equation, while being delightfully straightforward to self-host and demanding almost no resources.
It doesn't fit the "big public rooms" part just as neatly, like IRC ou Discord would, however, and I think that's ok.
I'm at the point in my life where I don't really need "decentralized" I just need federated with a hearty dose of data sovereignty. If that happens to come from a handful of good things, I'm ok with that.