XMPP

I've really wanted a unified contact and chat for a long time. I used to use pidgin for several years but I really wanted something that stored credentials encrypted, was usable on all my devices, and supported things like stickers and reactions. Now I've been really getting into federated services, and really want to use matrix since it seems to support all those things - but this post made me wonder about why did xmpp never really interest me before, and why now do I want to go with matrix instead. I don't know enough about either standard to know which is objectively better, so I think matrix has just gotten me excited because so many others are using it. I haven't seen a link to someone's xmpp account or chat or w/e... literally ever. But I've seen plenty of matrix channels. Edit: Actually, while continuing to explore slrpnk.net I found an xmpp link "in the wild" on c/self-hosting. That was a welcome surprise! Hopefully both standards can just support each other relatively well, so the federated chat ecosystem doesn't hurt itself by splitting in half.