I would rather prefer doing it the Ricochet way, yes:

> The recipient can calculate the sender's contact ID based on the public key, and authenticate it by verifying the signature on the request. This proves that the sender can publish the hidden service represented by their contact ID.

This is using IDs. For convenience of sharing and receiving: could be copy pasted (share button works on smartphones, too), and QR codes could be used.

Ricochet is metadata-free, and it can (or is, actually) be resistant to traffic analysis, too. No one knows who you are, and no one knows who you talk to.

Can you explain this a little more? Because the problem I see is that with any unique identifier it is hard to share in a hostile environment. Let's say I want to share my contact information to someone here but also share my contact information with someone on Reddit and not reveal that I am godelski on HN. Because if I use the identified "1234" here and "1234" on Reddit then I've connected those two accounts.

The only way I see it working out is with temporary identifiers or expiring links like FF send used to have. I saw some users talking about this in the community signal community form[0]. I agree with the users that are trying to say they want to use usernames to be anonymous, not as a way to hide a phone number.

[0] https://community.signalusers.org/t/usernames-in-signal