tldr: chapo.chat isn't ready yet.
Don't worry, you'll get to be called libs by the users from lemmygrad.ml Soon™.
[chapo.chat is] running a heavily modified version of lemmy forked months ago, for not just the front end, but the back end as well. Once they’re up to date with the most recent lemmy versions that have federation working, then we can try federation, on the back end at least. Their back end devs are great, but their front end devs contribute nothing upstream, and will have to re-create all the federation-related parts of the lemmy-ui code for their own fork.
EDIT: See @Beatnik's comment
always looking for more hands. if you know react, typescript, node, or rust. please reach out!
right now my biggest concern with enabling federation too early is that we break other instances with our throughput. our instance has a few differences that enable us to support a much higher amount of liberal shitposting.
I work with node (specifically hapijs) a lot for my day job -- I can't commit to any more side projects until the end of December but stick me on the list of potential helpers, I'm happy to contribute when I can
hell yeah! watch for an announcement in the near future. we'll detail how to contribute :)