IRC is used by Electrum server to find 'peers' - other Electrum servers. The current list can be seen by running: ./server.py peers The following config file options are used by the IRC part of Electrum server: [server] irc = yes host = fqdn.host.name.tld #report_host = fqdn.host.name.tld irc_nick = server nickname #report_stratum_http_port = 80 `irc` is used to determine whether the IRC thread will be started or the Electrum server will run in private mode (default). In private mode, `./server.py peers` will always return an empty list. `host` is a fully-qualified domain name (FQDN) of your Electrum server. It is used both when binding the listener for incoming client connections and as part of the realname field in IRC (see below). `report_host` is a an optional fully-qualified domain name (FQDN) of your Electrum server instead of `host`. It is used as part of the name field in IRC for incoming client connections. This is useful in a NAT setup where you bind to a private IP locally but have an external IP set up at your router and external DNS. `report_stratum_tcp_port`, `report_stratum_http_port`, `report_stratum_tcp_ssl_port`, `report_stratum_http_ssl_port` are optional settings for a port number to be reported in the IRC name field without actually binding this port locally. This is useful in a NAT setup where you might want to bind to a high port locally but DNAT a different possibly privileged port for inbound connections `irc_nick` is a nick name that will be appended to the E_ suffix when composing the IRC nickname to identify your server on #electrum. Please note the IRC name field can only contain 50 chars and will be composed of `host` + protocol version number + Port numbers for the various protocols. Please check whether port numbers are cut off at the end