Hey,
have you guys already heard of Matrix? https://matrix.org/blog/home/
It's some sort of modern IRC, using JSON to format messages. It's more modern than IRC. Features are: * Source code formatting and highlighting in messages * multiple devices * history + history synchronization between multiple devices * possible E2C encryption
and many more. In theory it will be a decentralized protocol, but there aren't that many servers yet and actually only one working server-software
Many projects, especially tech-based ones like the Rust programming language already use the service.
Personally I think it's an enormous progress to IRC. I would give it a chance if I were you :)
P.