I run a Zulip server and it's pretty good. The way they organise channels is extremely convoluted unfortunately (I wish they would just use absolutely standard channels layout like every other chat, and have everyone able to see them on join!) but well, beggars can't be choosers.
People go through all this trouble to host convoluted chat systems, and all this time IRC is right there. There's modern servers like Ergo and modern clients like Halloy (or for the JavaScript addicts: Convos, The Lounge, Kiwi, ...) providing all the multi-device history sharing and emoji reactions you could need. All on top of a super simple, extremely battle tested protocol.
But according to https://ircv3.net/software/clients, none of the clients you mentioned actually support emoji reactions (draft/react), and other features like multi-line messages and image uploads are likewise extremely limited in server/client support. So, for the time being, you can't use these features if you want to actually be interoperable with existing IRC users and their clients. Sounds like if you want decentralized, Matrix is still the better bet.
I have hosted IRC before but im not about to explain all the nuances to my non technical friends and family. At that point I will just use XMPP.
Interesting, I've also heard the exact opposite opinion [0] where Zulip’s non-standard approach is seen as its main strength.
[0]: https://chaos.social/@yorgos/115931944888149528