Neat, its always good to see people experimenting on a better DNS system. As others have mentioned, there are alternative systems to IRC, and I think you should consider them and what system of incentives are created by what choices you make.
You are using someone elses infrastructure, and even if you have done everything possible to minimize their overhead, you are still planning to use them for free. I think the other suggestions made here regarding options all have merits that I am not qualified to speak on; but I do know that decentralized/federated DNS is something highly sought after in bitcoin circles like on stackernews and nostr. You could use nostr very similarly to how you use it with your current implementation; I would very much love to use it to make remote access to services on my home network more accessible, and to allow others to use those services as well. There is a built in userbase of people that would like to host everything from cloud backups to online marketplaces to browser games, but using a centralized DNS is simply not an answer for them.
You are using someone elses infrastructure, and even if you have done everything possible to minimize their overhead, you are still planning to use them for free. I think the other suggestions made here regarding options all have merits that I am not qualified to speak on; but I do know that decentralized/federated DNS is something highly sought after in bitcoin circles like on stackernews and nostr. You could use nostr very similarly to how you use it with your current implementation; I would very much love to use it to make remote access to services on my home network more accessible, and to allow others to use those services as well. There is a built in userbase of people that would like to host everything from cloud backups to online marketplaces to browser games, but using a centralized DNS is simply not an answer for them.