A similar thing happened to IRC, which _still_ lacks heavily used features that other chat apps like discord and slack have had for years and years. Simlarly, end-to-end encryption for emails is unlikely to ever become a thing despite the privacy advantages.
IRC isn't and never was federated. It is a centralized chat protocol where you connect to isolated networks.
Similarly Matrix is making massively huge gains in the chat space and is federated. It's not taking over slack or discord yet, but is gaining features and ground.
I don't just want federation, I want to know that my/friend/family's information (or at least private messages) is private because I know they won't "self host".
1. define a schema for the blob. recipient pubkey, signature, hash, etc
2. define a delineator or symbol of some sort to encapsulate the serialized blob so our plugin recognizes it
3. parse blob into readable text for the user
4. provide interface to manage/create keys/messages and load the blob to the clipboard for users to paste into whatever.
voila. please hold your applause, I'm going to need one of you to MVP this by the end of the week.
The real issue is the actual exchange of messages
Why would we a social network to be anything other than a microblogging platform? In case it lacks some conveniences you would like it to have, why not just add them as optional features?