I haven’t found a way to just tell someone my Delta handle (because apparently, there is no such thing), they way I would an e-mail address or a phone number - e.g. on the phone, or in person, if they don’t have their smartphone handy.
It looks like I can only share my Delta contact with anyone if I already have a way of sending them a clickable link or scannable QR code.
So is my impression correct that basically smartphones are a requirement (even though we don’t need a phone number) to use it?
Also writing the ID down on a piece of paper is not really an option if the ID is a) something I can’t remember and/or b) a (to humans) meaningless string of characters because not only hard to remember, but also very susceptible to errors.
TL;DR Print the invite QR and minimized i.delta.chat link on your business card or on a regular sheet of paper cut up to small slices. The recipient of such a card can either scan or type it in at home. No theoretical decentralized alternative could provide you a way to remember it and spell it out over the phone, because any such scheme would preferably require sharing at least 256 bits of entropy (43 random characters in base64 or 52 in more “easily” remembered base32). Even a toy scheme would require 128 bits that is already out of reach.
See also problems with centralized alternatives and other issues this is a duplicate of:
i agree with ian and i add that not having a simple discovery mechanism is one of the strenght and it also allows us to have more relays without fuss without setting up a whole layer of DID providers
A PKI is totally possible. It’s even possible to do it in a privacy preserving way and keep it human-readable. But even if something like a DHT or a blockchain is decentralized, I’m guessing Delta Chat still doesn’t want it as bottleneck?
Tell me if I’m on the right track: I think the logic might be that if you tightly couple the UX to a service like that, you can block the entire network if you just find ways to attack that one service.