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DeMail: Privacy-Preserving, Decentralized Email Marketing

A Technical Deep Dive into the Future of Privacy-Preserving, Decentralized Email Marketing

Table of Contents

  1. Press Release
  2. Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
  3. Technical Framework
    • Blockchain Infrastructure
    • XMTP Protocol
    • Decentralized Identity Management
    • Economic Anti-Spam Measures
    • Consent Management
    • Open-Source Contributions
    • Ecosystem Synergies
  4. User Experience
  5. Competitive Advantages
  6. Why Email Marketing?
  7. Conclusion

Press Release

DeMail Unveils a Cutting-Edge Solution for Decentralized, Economically Incentivized (d)Email Marketing

DeMail, a pioneering company operating adjacent to the XMTP ecosystem, is ecstatic to announce its dapp for decentralized, economically-incentivized email marketing and communications. Building upon the XMTP protocol, DeMail not only optimizes email marketing for businesses but also contributes to the growing web3 messaging ecosystem. This includes the development of open-source technologies aimed at enriching the user and developer experience in this ecosystem.

Retention is the scarcest resource in web3 and DeMail’s vision is to change that by enabling creator-to-audience communication which blossoms in a positive-sum networks.

2. Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

What is DeMail?

DeMail is a company focused on building complementary dapp and protocols for email marketing. It leverages XMTP as the transport protocol for the messages. The dapp provides businesses with a platform for high efficiency email marketing that optimizes the user experience while improving business outcomes by leveraging blockchain accounts as communication addresses and cryptocurrencies for incentivization.

What is XMTP?

XMTP, or Extensible Message Transport Protocol, is a decentralized protocol for secure messaging between blockchain accounts. Learn more: xmtp.org

How does DeMail differ from web2 email marketing?

DeMail uses decentralized web3 building blocks and aligns economic incentives to improve messaging outcomes for both the sender and receiver. We believe that web2 email marketing is broken because it has fundamentally misaligned incentives. Senders pay virtually nothing to send email (even if it’s worthless or downright malicious) and therefore receivers are burdened with setting up filters, protecting themselves from scams, and ultimately finding the valuable messages in a mountain of junk.

How does DeMail differ from web3/privacy-focused email?

DeMail deeply believes in the human right to privacy and maximizes user-privacy by using end-to-end encryption (via XMTP) and zero-knowledge proofs. However, we do not directly compete with Skiff, ProtonMail, and other web3/privacy-focused email applications because we believe that the two biggest issues with email today are 1) misaligned economic incentives and 2) a lack of ownership for users over their identity and data. DeMail directly tackles these issues respectively by using cryptocurrencies to align incentives and blockchain accounts (private keys) for identity.

Does DeMail compete with XMTP?

No. In fact, we use XMTP as the transport protocol. We also actively contribute to the development of open-source technologies, primarily in the XMTP ecosystem, to make the web3 messaging ecosystem more robust and scalable.

3. Technical Framework

Blockchain Infrastructure

DeMail leverages different blockchain technologies to provide a layer of security, privacy, and decentralization that traditional web2 solutions can't offer. Specifically, DeMail uses XMTP and is built to function on Ethereum (along with other EVM compatible blockchains) and Solana, among other blockchains, benefiting from their smart contract capabilities, decentralized storage solutions like IPFS, and permissionless innovation.

Smart Contracts

Smart contracts serve as the backbones for several functionalities, including:

  • User Directory: Businesses and individuals register their messaging identities (e.g. XMTP messaging keys) in a decentralized directory to self-custody their decentralized identity (DiD). This directory is immutable (other than the user rotating their own messaging keys or changing their human-readable identifier using ENS), transparent, and secured by L2 blockchains (e.g. Base) in the Ethereum ecosystem to support big features with small fees.
  • Payment Mechanism: Smart contracts handle the pay-to-send and pay-to-open fees, securely “escrowing funds” until specific conditions are met, like opening a message (verified using ZK-SNARKs).

XMTP Protocol

DeMail's architecture builds on XMTP for secure message delivery. XMTP is the decentralized protocol responsible for encrypting messages and ensuring they reach the intended recipients without the need for intermediaries.

By using XMTP, each message sent through DeMail is encrypted using the receiver's messaging public key, ensuring that only the intended recipient, who possesses the corresponding private key, can decrypt it. This end-to-end encryption methodology adds an extra layer of security.

Decentralized Identity Management

Utilizing services like Ethereum Name Service (ENS) and Solana Name Service (SNS), DeMail allows for human-readable addresses, simplifying complex blockchain addresses (0x97b4AfF7aa20C3136c9D3c52d3b3Bfb103Dc48c3) into an easily understandable format, like onchainsummer.eth. Announcing ENS names publicly on social media, brands can establish their identities in a cryptographically verifiable manner, enhancing trust and reducing phishing risks (these attacks are prevalent on email and cost billions of dollars annually).

Economic Anti-Spam Measures

To curb spam, DeMail introduces an economic barrier:

  • Staking: A default minimum fee ($0.01 USDC) is required to send a message to each new contact that does not have the sender in their allowlist. This makes broadcasting thousands of spammy messages economically unviable. Receiving users can manually change this minimum fee based on their preferences (e.g. I can set it such that any address not in my allowlist has to pay $5 USDC to message me).
  • Dynamic Pricing: For specific allow-listed contacts, users can set the sending fee to a reduced rate or even make it free (e.g. for chats with friends and family). At the same time, if the network observers an address responsible for a high volume of traffic within a give time window, dynamic pricing increases the rate (from $0.01 to $0.50 over time) to disincentivize spam.
  • Economic filtering and ordering: Users can choose to separate their allowlist inbox (containing messages from allowlisted addresses) from their non-allowlisted inbox (all other messages) and also choose to apply sorting that orders non-allowlisted messages in decreasing order of stake. If a sender pays more.
  • Sender protection: Senders, especially broadcasters, can enable a setting so that their messages along with their staked fees are returned if the receiver doesn’t open them. For example, an artist drops a new NFT and sends a broadcast message to their community of 10,000 staking $0.10 per user and $1000 total with a maximum lifespan of 2 weeks. If only 5,000 users open the message, the artist is returned $500 for the stake that wasn’t used up by the users who didn’t open the message.
  • Portable preferences: Information such as the default fee, allowlists, blocklists are stored in a portable manner (using a mix of technologies like Ethereum L2 rollups like Base and composable data networks Ceramic Network) to allow users to seamlessly have their preferences in Coinbase Wallet (e.g. blocking spammer.eth, adjusting their pay-to-send fee to $4.35) propagate to apps like Converse, Lenster, and others (spammer.eth is blocked in these other apps as well, pay-to-send fee is increased to $4.35) and vice versa.

Consent Management

In DeMail, consent management is an on-chain operation, preserved via ZK-SNARKs (already supported on some Ethereum L2 and coming to Base soon) to ensure privacy. Users can set preferences about who can contact them and at what price, and these preferences are unalterable except by the user (owner of the private key).

Open-Source Contributions

DeMail actively contributes to open-source projects related to web3 messaging (spanning the XMTP ecosystem and beyond). This includes developing methods to efficiently and privately store user preferences like allowlists and blocklists directly on the blockchain in a private manner. The aim is to make these features standard across all multiple applications, benefiting the ecosystem at large.

Ecosystem Synergies

DeMail is designed to integrate seamlessly with existing web3 technologies:

  • DAOs: Facilitating decentralized governance by enabling secure, transparent communication among DAO members. DAOs can incentivize users to receive important messages about votes and other activities. By virtue of using DeMail, DAOs also verifiably know who to message. Instead of blasting everyone in a long and always growing email list, they can filter for users who hold membership NFTs or a certain token to effectively target using on-chain data.
  • DeFi: Enabling direct marketing for financial protocols, thus amplifying user engagement. DeFi protocols can also facilitate private transactions using DeMail where users engage in peer-to-peer lending and borrowing which could provide cheaper interest rates between trusted parties.
  • NFT Platforms: Allowing businesses to send targeted messages based on verified NFT ownership.

4. User Experience

Intuitive Onboarding

DeMail aims for an intuitive user experience starting from onboarding. Users can easily activate their blockchain accounts on DeMail (using XMTP network under the hood) and are guided through setting up their preferences for allowlisting/blocklisting known contacts, setting minimum pay-to-send fees, and select a location to store their messages (IPFS, local device, iCloud, etc).

Wallet Integration

DeMail is compatible with all popular wallets such as MetaMask, WalletConnect, Ledger and many others out of the box. This allows for seamless identity management and secure transaction confirmations, as all pay-to-send and pay-to-open fees can be paid and collected via these trusted wallets.

Dynamic Pricing and Incentives

The platform has a unique feature where users can set their own pricing for reading messages. This empowers users to monetize their attention while incentivizing higher quality messages from senders. Users can also opt to return the fee partially or entirely if the message is deemed valuable, encouraging better targeting by businesses (e.g. a long lost friend messages me and grabs my attention by sending me $50 USDC to have their message show up at the top of my inbox, I’m elated to reconnect with this friend and return 100% of their stake).

Custom Filters and Allowlists

With DeMail, users can implement custom filters based on sender attributes, pay-to-send fees offered, or other blockchain-related attributes like NFT ownership. This customizability ensures that only relevant messages make it to the inbox (e.g. Coinbase Wallet, Converse, Lenster inbox, etc), which is a feature unique to DeMail's decentralized architecture.

Analytics and Feedback

For businesses, DeMail provides insightful analytics in partnership with Dune to measure the effectiveness of their campaigns and if/how it may be have interesting relationships with relevant on-chain data. Metrics such as open rates, partial or full fee returns, and percent replies are available on the dashboard, along with custom queries, offering businesses a granular understanding of user engagement.

5. Competitive Advantages

Technological Superiority

  • Encryption: Unlike traditional platforms where security might be compromised at various touchpoints, DeMail uses end-to-end encryption secured by the blockchain.
  • Zero-Knowledge Proofs: The use of ZK-SNARKs enables actions to be verified without revealing the underlying data, adding another layer of privacy that isn't possible with traditional platforms.
  • Self-custody: Users own their identity (whether a 0x EVM address or a human-readable ENS) as well as their chats, preferences, and other data (stored encrypted in a location of their choice).

Economic Incentives

  • Anti-Spam Mechanism: The pay-to-send model makes it costly for spammers to flood inboxes, an improvement over the hit-or-miss spam filters of traditional email services that are operated as opaque black boxes by oligopolistic companies.
  • Revenue-Generating: For users, DeMail turns the activity of reading emails into a potential revenue stream.

Decentralization and Open-Source Ethos

  • No Central Authority: Being decentralized eliminates the risks associated with central points of failure, be it for reasons of censorship, data breaches, or service discontinuity. Both marketers and users can switch to a different email marketing service without losing their personal data, funds, or the right to communicate.
  • Open-Source Contributions: By contributing to open-source, DeMail ensures a continuously evolving, community-driven ecosystem that benefits all stakeholders.

Ecosystem Integrations

  • Web3 native: DeMail isn't just an isolated product; it's an integral part of the broader web3 ecosystem. Its seamless integrations with DAOs, DeFi, and NFT platforms offer unprecedented functionalities, far beyond the scope of any web2 email service.

6. Why Email Marketing? Can DeMail make money?

The case for improving email marketing is backed by overwhelming data. Some quick facts:

These mind-boggling numbers bring out the dichotomy in the world of email. It’s the most popular “messaging network” by any standard (no. of users, emails/message sent everyday, etc) and yet it’s the rife with fraud, scam, and crime. And despite the advent of modern messaging apps like Slack, Whatsapp, and countless others, email is not slowing down. According to HubSpot, email’s dominance in the market of digital communication is exactly why 4 out of 5 marketers, four out of five marketers say they’d rather give up social media than email marketing.

This dichotomy presents an opportunity to disrupt using the cutting-edge technologies pioneered by web3 to create a product suite like DeMail that overhauls assumptions and rebuilds email marketing from first principles — especially when it comes to critical components like security, privacy, and economic alignment amongst all stakeholders.

Now to the all important question of can DeMail make money. We believe so. DeMail plans to sell it’s web3 marketing platform to marketers, brands, and creators on a subscription basis using the classic software-as-a-service model. Additionally, we believe that is an opportunity to capture a small percent of the value flowing through the future of email by having fee switch on the staking fee that accrues a percent of the staking fees to messages sent via DeMail. Lastly, by collaborating and contributing to protocols such as XMTP, we also have lucrative opportunities to be node operators and benefit from airdrops of tokens in the web3 messaging ecosystem.

Note: DeMail itself does not currently plan to introduce its own token.

7. Conclusion

DeMail isn't just an evolutionary step forward in digital communication; it's a revolutionary reimagining of how email should work in the era of Web3. With its focus on user-centric design, economic incentives for both senders and receivers, and contributions to the broader XMTP and web3 ecosystems, DeMail is positioned to redefine the way businesses think about email marketing in a win-win-win manner for everyone involved.

Through its superior technological offerings and by solving age-old problems of spam, privacy, and user consent, DeMail stands as a forerunner in the next generation of communication platforms.

Whether you're a business looking to make your email marketing campaigns more effective and secure, or an end-user tired of wading through irrelevant messages and concerned about privacy, DeMail offers a robust, decentralized solution that returns control back to where it belongs: the user.

In essence, DeMail isn't just building a standalone platform; it's building the future of secure, user-controlled, economically sensible communication in collaboration with other mission-aligned teams. Welcome to DeMail, welcome to the future.