Bitly for Bitcoin?

[DrBitcoin]

Would it be possible to develop some sort of Bitly-type service for Bitcoin wallet addresses? What I mean, is that as of now, a wallet address is an insanely long and random string of letters and numbers which allows for a huge combination of possibilities. But would it be possible to somehow create a third party service that allowed a user instead of saying:

Send Bitcoins to: 2Abeoc7s73fsJbk8n448j

You could say:

Send Bitcoins to: TheBitcoinWallet.Stud

Or something like that. The links could be way shorter and customizable, and evaporate after a certain period of time to allow readability and variation.

Mind you I am not a programmer or a developer, I just think this seems like a problem that needs solving if this technology is going to go more mainstream.

[NLNico]

An online wallet could include it in their services for their -own- users. Like a decentralized database that changes the short-address to the real address upon the transaction.

I think inputs.io had that (and got hacked or 'hacked' so online/decentralized wallets might not be the best solution as wallet.)

Within the core bitcoin protocol/code I am quite sure it's not possible ever. I'm not sure if it's really a problem either. Most companies/webshops will give you an easy QR code to scan for your mobile wallet and for your computer you could copy-paste the address. Obviously there are some people who barely know how to copy-paste and use a computer, but not sure if bitcoin necessarily has to be for them :X

There will be disadvantages too. If the short-address that you want is not available any more, you might dislike bitcoin right away as new user. Also by QR and copy-pasting the addresses there will be less typos and since 'normal' bitcoin transaction are irreversible that's quite important.

But will be interested to hear more arguments for why it's needed and if someone does have a good idea for it.

[Mitchell]

Well, creating a service which saves an address with a custom address isn't hard. The problem would be that wallets, websites and stuff like that wouldn't know what to do with that custom address. You would either have to convert it back to the original address or they would have to do a API call to the service to get the original address. It's do-able, that's for sure.

To be honest, I already have a project like this laying around. I might continue with that after my current project (redoing LockMyBitcoins).