Also, what's the general Laravel consensus on static-style helper classes?

(I imagine this is frowned on in DI land)

// App/Libraries/Hashids.php (autoloaded by composer)
<?php namespace App\Libraries;

class Hashids
{
	private static $instance;

	public static function encode($value)
	{
		return static::factory()->encode($value);
	}

	public static function decode($value)
	{
		return static::factory()->decode($value);
	}

	public static function factory()
	{
		if( ! static::$instance )
		{
			static::$instance = new \Hashids\Hashids(\Config::get('app.salt'));
		}
		return static::$instance;
	}
}

// application code
use App\Libraries\Hashids;
$hash = Hashids::encode($id);

Not good these days?

Or perfectly useable?