It is an more private alternative to Discord. Even tough they do not offer federation, self-hosting servers is possible, but self-hosting Dms is not possible. Matrix does not have separated voice and text chats in one server, aka Discord style. Is it better to use Revolt for now or create our own Federated Discord alternative?
Revolt: https://revolt.chat/
Yop, got my approval, better than pepecord.
You also can setup bridges to telegram and matrix. It is more stable and reliable compared to other solutions. To answer the question about federation, I would create my own if I had to choose.