i was wondering, would it be possible to have local user nicknames in groups? basically like the fact that members of a group share group info to each other, could they share a random nick based on the name of the account?
this would allow tagging other people without attaching the nick to a particular address; basically the dumb nick would be part of the fake profile that members share to each other
maybe i misunderstood that delta profiles exist only as shared data but they are not and so this is not feasible, let me know
You could possibly already @-mention other members within the group based on their key fingerprint or any unique prefix of it, just like it is done in git. No further data would need to be maintained and synchronized then.
However, I still believe that user ping mentions would be more durable if it was serialized as an openpgp4fpr or i.delta.chat URI (only with the fingerprint and address included) in the sent message. The Delta Chat interface would render such links as a clickable user pill with the username and avatar for the given user in the group.