[0]: https://pestnet.io
Cached copy here: https://web.archive.org/web/20220915015328/https://pestnet.i...
Reminds me a bit of SILC: http://www.silcnet.org/
Still going to struggle with UX on a phone though...
I remember IRC very fondly, but I feel it has a lot of baggage that makes it difficult to bring into the modern era.
This blog post (not mine) explains it quite well: https://jlu5.com/blog/im-tired-of-irc-heres-why
You encrypt the message with all the public key's from persons in the group, what's the problem? You do it the same way with Mail...aka pgp.
You don't need OTR just plain old gnupg:
If you get a whole bunch of people together in real life for a meeting then chances are one or more of them is going to leak what happened. The problem is to a great extent inherent.
And no you don't need to verify each other keys, since every one has his public key you obliviously trust, you just try to make an excuse for not knowing how e2e works.