So for one thing, we WILL introduce a mechanism to prove that the keys are not tampered with when resolving a name.   Looking at factom or just writing the hash to the blockchain that can be validated by the client directly.

As for the decentralized part.  That will be based on the data store.  (Maidsafe, Ethereum, Namecoin, etc).    That will solve a central point of resolving addresses.  The other piece is the management of addresses.   I feel that key management is growing and we will soon see methods to authenticate that will not require a central authority.  We see this with mobile and using the isolated compute space to create and store private keys.   Once you can easily identify and store your private keys we can then transfer your "vanikey" from a centralized managed repository that publishes to a decentralized datastore to a datastore you fully control the private key and management and that distribution continues to happen. 

Short term, if we introduce the functionality within the wallet itself, there is a private key already available and can then create and manage the "vanikey" which would allow us to move quicker to the decentralized goal.

Sorry,  hope that answered something...       I'm not looking to take over this thread but I am very interested to see the interest and how I can inform the group about our service, see whats lacking, check the interest, and see if we can move DASH forward.