irc is able to handle 10-15k people on a cpu from 25 years ago. there is no overhead, the irc protocol supports slow mode, passworded chat, moderation and everything
the use of xmpp and in specific prosody for something meant to support a lot of viewership via webtorrent originally still astounds me
if i have to pay someone to make us a plugin, i will. but it needs to be IRC based
