Hi I am Ankur and a full stack web developer who also build iOS apps. I have heard and used Stellar since 2014 but only recently have dug into the documentation and see how powerful it can be if others decide to build on top of this ecosystem. The documentation is great and the sample code are easy for anyone to get started with.
I wanted to give back to this community and would like to participate in the SBC by building a Stellar Public Key Address shortening service like URL Shortener as I did not see anything like this in the community yet.
One issue I see with using Stellar to send and receive payments it the hurdle of sharing the Public Key Address. The public key is really long and cryptic and it is hard to tell if you are sending payment to the right person.
To solve this there are QR codes that can be printed and shared but if you want to share your public key verbally or via text message or plain text it is still hard. This is where a URL shortener like service can come in handy where a memorizable or shortened URL can expand to the full Stellar Public Key Address.
I will be working on a Public Key Expander web service where you can enter your Public Key and it will generate a short URL that can written or shared verbally with friends via text message or printed on a card for them to get the full Public Key Address so that they can send payment to your address. This service would also allow you to specify a custom path name in the URL so that you can make a memorizable URL that can be easily shared.
For example making a request to URL endpoint like this
http://st.lr/john would return the following as the response in plain text
GBPDECNFXWNDP33IWWKU7IIROOFQLSMPEDVZSCM7A42ZK3RM23SZIEUU
I am open to any suggestion on this idea. Will post the repo and code for this here and build this app using Ruby on Rails or Swift using Vapor framework.