I am a daily IRC user and I think you are exaggerating the problems. I can count on my one hand the number of times I have seen an attack on my nick or the channels I hang out in, in the last 15 years. Those attacks pass without much disruption (sometimes requiring staffer intervention). Nick squatting is solved by Nickserv these days. Splits do happen occasionally but they resolve on their own automatically without much disruption.

It is ok if it never gets adopted as mainstream communication. But for the target audience (like opensource support communities being the target audience of Libera), it works quite well.