> The fact that we operate a strictly optional logically centralised directory service to look up matrix IDs by email address or phone number. I really wish we'

> The fact that we operate a strictly optional logically centralised directory service to look up matrix IDs by email address or phone number. I really wish we'd never added this to Matrix; it causes way more grief than it solves (Not a Matrix user so maybe help me understand here.) I think the reason why I have about 30 contacts (instead of like 3) on Signal is due to phone number discovery. It's not decentralized, which is of course subject to criticism, but exchanging & verifying public keys between O(N^2) people hasn't "taken off" in the X decades since it was invented. > we'd have been better off waiting off for someone to build a decentralised keybase service and use that instead. Do you have an example of any mainstream product that has ever achieved that, without either being partly centralized? Decentralized identity is really, really, really hard, and mostly the layer-8 implementation (discovery, name-squatting, impersonation, abuse, spam, key-management and exchange, etc).