It does use nostr identity though, I can be sure someone I'm chatting in IRC is the same person I chat with in nostr, with just a single registration flow. (Obviously I have to trust the IRC operator though, who is me.) Nostr can be used this way, but only if we keep around specs like NIP17 so that someone can send/receive invite codes. This new spec is so much different than NIP17, I can't figure out why it's good to merge over, what's the point, just to try to kill off nip17? Why didn't we merge nip17 over kind04? Just pick a new number or letter. The people talking about metadata are also correct, more metadata exposed is not a good thing at all..