If I read this correctly, the "Enterprise Grid" section hints at one technical reason for this move. Slack recently announced[0] a new feature that allows multi

If I read this correctly, the "Enterprise Grid" section hints at one technical reason for this move. Slack recently announced[0] a new feature that allows multiple teams, err "Workspaces", to share a channel. This violates the uniqueness of @usernames within the namespace of the shared channel, e.g. both teams having a "@john". This announcement anticipates (a) getting developers to use surrogate UIDs instead of @username for mentions, and (b) that their clients will only use display names in the future and rely on specific UI elements to distinguish ambiguous ones. [0] https://medium.com/slack-developer-blog/network-effects-getting-ready-for-shared-channels-600b7cc776df https://medium.com/slack-developer-blog/network-effects-gett...