Not sure, as there are lots of log messages. Guess I need to let it run for longer and see if it syncs eventually
Discussion
Maybe its that, because this spam attack are making a lot of longer the time to sync
what exactly do you sync on irc?
You need to sync the darkirc node, and then just connect it to any IRC client.
https://darkrenaissance.github.io/darkfi/misc/darkirc/darkirc.html
Did you get error logs?