I agree, but those base technologies are not currently a replacement for WhatsApp. We should have been funding development and integration of a social stack 5 years ago.

It'll need seamless payment and identity validation functionality, and significant user experience and reliability work before it can be a replacement. That all has to be in place before implementation which is a separate major challenge

I use them myself, and i guarantee that they're not a viable alternative, because the average person finds them very hard to use

When I mention this, people around foss communities often say "oh, but it's like email"

Exactly! People don't know how to use email!

For some chat app to be a viable replacement, it needs to register by phone number, without passwords, and find all your contacts automatically. The closest we have is signal, but the server isn't open source, and its nonprofit group is tied to the usa

Matrix is good, but has some serious convenience issues around authenticating new devices. And locking messages on public group chats if resetting your "recovery key".

I misspoke, I just meant to refer to the various countries that have been working on it without having to look up which ones it was. You're right though