Basic messaging? No, messages are one of the building blocks of XMPP and are specified in RFC 6120: https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc6120.html#section-8.2.1

The core spec allows you to send messages and presence and is actually enough in many cases. It's far from enough for a modern experience, bust all servers and at least 1 client per platform exist with all the expected XEPs that will bring you an experience close to what Whatsapp provides (with the notorious lack of A/V calls and maybe not so straightforward file exchanges)

Naysayers keep arguing that the jungle of XEPs make it too hard to implement and use and that's what halting the adoption of XMPP, but that's like saying no one is doing any web innovation because the specs are too big. The reality is that only a big name with continuous marketing work and advocacy is missing from XMPP, and is the one reason Matrix got where it is today.