Strange, it appears that some of the people behind the #freenode #hostiletakeover and now starting up a new #irc #server named #ergo https://ergo.chat/ The IRC world is pretty small it seems. I personally will stick with #libera for a while. After this I think I might checkout the possibility of building a simple #telnet #server and #client and be done with IRC entirely. That will likely be down the road though!