I was working on Status 2 years ago and they came up with "identicon ring" and "emoji hash". Especially the ring itself is great. Imagine a unique color ring wrapped around you avatar that is generated out the hash of your pubkey. This way you never can impersonate someone, because you get used to seeing a special ring around your friends avatars that is impossible to game 
Discussion
Interesting concept. I could see it working if people are aware of what it is. But I do wonder if for the vast majority of people they won’t connect the dots easily?