By which I mean in terms of usage, development, or stability. Also along those lines, which English-speaking instances would you recommend?
Interested as Misskey & forks have some feature edges over Mastodon in my opinion, but it’s somewhat harder to find discussion/info about them.
Firefish > Iceshrimp
Hilarious, makes me kind of want to see it fail again just to see what people come up with as the next name in line.
Off the top of my head: Windsquid, Rockwhale, Waterclam.
Earthcrab