Optional human readable names could be a good system combining convenience with resilience.
Agreed it's a very hard problem. We're in the process of forming a syndicate of like-minded parties who are interested in seeing this come to life because the model itself has no exit plan and is basically anathema to traditional capital funding.
Also, to be clear, names are hashed/salted in the backend with Argon2ID and a rotating salt. So the name index itself isn't enumerable, but it doesn't necessarily guarantee names are private once they are shared publicly. Theoretically you could lookup someone based on their public key without knowing their name - so in that sense it's somewhat close to what you're describing.
Perhaps you could do a name presale, although I’m not sure that would be enough funding. I look forward to hearing more about it.
Anyone interested can reach me directly at hn@sepositus.com (this is a SimpleLogin alias to protect my email from spam).
Any usage of the name in identifiers includes the epoch. Identifiers from several epochs could be concurrently in use. Identifiers rooted in different name epochs are not be comparable.
Out of band networking effects need to establish the meaning of a specific name epoch. The disambiguation doesn't work if the intended consumers are unwilling to learn and distinguish the epoch component of identifiers they care about.
I suppose, at the limit, this is the same as just having everyone add some numeric suffix to names they try to register? But it would be more constrained, e.g. structurally enforce that the digits correspond to some kind of clock metadata which is a witnessed and signed part of the decentralized ledger.
A goal of the work was to try to explain to a new audience (specifically nontechnical legal folks) the ongoing challenges with Going Dark. Hopefully it helps!