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What is it?
XMPP is a simple federated instant messaging protocol that has been around for about twenty years. This protocol actually provides the foundation for a number of popular and widely-used messenger services, including Google Talk and Facebook Messenger. It is simple, lightweight, proven, and reliable. Unfortunately, it's also somewhat less user-friendly than more modern chat services such as Matrix.
Moonbeam.town has its own XMPP server because it comes with YUNoHost and I didn't see the need to disable it, but due to Matrix's greater ease of use and more-developed feature set I've decided to focus on that for building this community. Nevertheless, everyone has access to the XMPP server, and can use it for various things.