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> Fewer clients

It does work decently on my phone though.

> the identity server is centralized

Is that really a downside? I don't know a single newcomer who found authenticating with "Nickserv" was a natural thing to do.

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At the same time, people used IRC because you could remain anonymous (with IP leakage being the only real issue). Matrix seems like a FBI honeypot asking you for email and phone number.

As stated above, these are completely optional and only used for contact discovery (and password resets in the case of e-mail).

Edit: Though I believe that matrix.org requires an e-mail address nowadays. But most homeservers don't.

matrix.org does not, though it does have a prompt for e-mail on registration page. There's a line of text under it explaining that this is for optional opt-in contact discovery and password resets.

Hmm, I've been hearing mentions of it being required since recently. But then I haven't tried it myself, so I may be wrong.

Matrix DOES NOT require an email or phone#.

irccloud works great on my phone. You can paste screenshots and do pretty much everything I want out of a chat client.

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