Bugout instance name instead of address

[robert1233]

Is there a way to say "Robert connected", instead of using the hash address? Thanks!

[chr15m]

Yes there are different ways to associate a name with a hash and it really depends on your design choices. Some ways to do it:

• Have the user specify their own user name and send a packet out to each new Bugout instance that there is a seen event for telling them what username to use. This is the method used by dirc - if you don't mind multiple users potentially having the same username on the screen then this method is fine.

• Link user names to some external service like Twitter or GitHub. This is what gitter.im does for example. In a post called decentralized identity linking I wrote up some ideas around that concept.

• Build your own username registration infrastructure.

At the lowest level what you want is for the message recipient's Bugout node to have some concept of a username associated with the hash. A simple key->value mapping from hash->username can solve this but what goes into the value side of the lookup and how it gets there depends upon your design.