You created another nick or another channel and moved on with life. I liked EFnet, although the conversation got disrupted by troublemakers all the time, I met some really interesting people on it. Freenode was also too nice with nick registration and nicer people and no stinking IRC network task force on the channels like on UnderNet. You totally had the option to be a nomad or register a nickname or a channel.

The next logical step would have been to make it encrypted and add p2p voice chat via DCC or some other method. SILC tried the former but failed to gain traction, people either stuck with IRC or moved on to AIM and Yahoo Messaneger.