That latter aspect, registering your account with NickServ does seem to sucks somewhat.. Apparently there have been some bots active which have registered a whole bunch of nicks which previously existed on FreeNode. #libera is full of people (including myself) who are asking if staff can do something about this nick squatting. Understandably that will take time and I've simply registered another nick, but man, you get attached to a 15+ year old nick you've been using on OFTC, FreeNode and a bunch of other ye olde IRC networks..