For a more unix-y take on an encrypted store-and-forward network (so no persistence necessary when communicating, not even simplex), take a look at http://www.nncpgo.org/index.html (HTTPS: https://www.complete.org/nncp/). Key exchange happens completely out-of-band and it can also use pretty much any link you throw at it. On mobile, I've used it on Android using Termux but it's not the best experience for sure.

IKEv2 was a shitshow because it was designed like a telecoms protocol not because of any NSA conspiracy. Most telecos have control over both ends and want to spend as little on capital expenditures as possible so they put highly-configurable, complicated protocols in place that can be changed on either end.

Turns out that over the internet where your packets are going through middleboxes from different manufacturers that a complicated protocol will be half-implemented everywhere. Wireguard and QUIC both accept the reality that the internet is a "worse is better" system.

Web3 is super complicated but the developer experience is still pretty good. Just like nobody's writing web servers from scratch these days to serve a web site, a long list of standards is only weak if the tooling is week.

I like the values of the project but I'm not a fan of the branding and I think there needs to be some reasonably useful app to showcase its use to garner adoption at all.

What you say is true, but IMO there's still a lot of gold on HN near the top. I still learn a lot about technology there. Just avoid any thread on crypto or social media, those are all garbage fires. Maybe just avoid non-tech threads in general there.

Do you find that AntennaPod is more useful than just dropping files into a directory? Just curious because that's what I'm doing now.

I prefer to direct download podcast content when possible. I don't consume enough podcasts to derive value from an intermediary client.