A federated, decentralized system that you can either self-host or join the servers of others, even better if we can offer to donate bandwidth, hosting, and processing power to servers we join in order to distribute the operational strain.
This is the path I was hoping to see Matrix go, but so far I haven't run across a method of joining servers, or if there is one, I also haven't actually seen any multi-server groups anywhere. Not that I have much experience with Matrix, so there certainly could be groups like that already?
The closest thing to a Discord server Matrix-wise are Spaces, which basically are groups of Rooms that people can join by invite (and maybe by link? But not sure)
I see in Matrix as a protocol great potential but it needs some more projects that will focus on the different aspects of communication.
Element cannot aim to be both a WhatsApp replacement, a Slack replacement and a Discord replacement, but for sure 3 different alternatives for those services can be built all using the Matrix protocol
Discord clearly feels comfortable enough to begin enshitification. Feels like anything related to it has a short lifespan. Like third party apps for reddit and the api fiasco.