Internet Communication as It Stands Today

There are over 3.9 billion active email users today. Each user’s inbox paints a rich picture of who they are. It stores their online actions, communication habits, spending behavior, even their thoughts, ideas, and feelings.  And everybody wants to keep that information private.

Businesses are dependent upon email as a primary means of communication. They invest significant time and money in service availability, security, backups and archiving.

Consumers, on the other hand, expect access to reliable, feature-rich email services for free. But it costs money to support these features.

‍"If you’re not paying for the product, you are the product.”

The largest email providers rely on business models that analyze user data to trigger buying behavior. The ‘free’ user must compromise privacy and identity to use the service. This compromise grows as the user’s inbox footprint grows.  And there isn’t a convenient alternative.

Internet Communication in Web3 Today

‍Web3 is underpinned by the following principles: decentralization, privacy and digital property rights, using blockchain wallets and addresses as identities. Web3 pioneers have created a new Internet era built upon these principles: New financial primitives, new ways to sell art and media, new ways to play games, and new ways to privately share data. But there is no way to communicate privately using these blockchain addresses.

• Users can’t receive direct communication related to their transactions and financial positions.
• Users can’t receive private, personalized information from their favorite creators.
• Users can’t contact other community members, to coordinate projects or purchases.
• Businesses can’t send invoices or receipts.
• Developers can’t send critical updates, such as security issues, or upgrades.

The workaround is to use another communication channel, whether that’s email, instant messaging apps, or social media. These options either compromise user privacy, require rapt attention to a timeline often filled with irrelevant information, or expose users to spam and phishing attempts.

Without communication as a first-class citizen, many actions taken for granted on the Internet cannot take place in Web3. And it is holding adoption back.

The Opportunity of Communication & Web3

There is a major opportunity here. An opportunity to re-imagine Internet communication using Web3 principles and make it right and fair for everyone, whether acting as a business or individual, for the first time in history.

The Challenges of Communication in Web3

This opportunity is not without its challenges.  First, users want to communicate without compromising on the user experience, cost or features they have come to expect with traditional email and messaging systems.  Second, any user needs to be able to communicate with any other user, and communication needs to support an array of identities, transcend protocols, and transmit seamlessly. Third, the economic model powering transactional messaging needs to be inexpensive and offer predictable costs.

Mailchain as a New Communications Standard

Someone had to see the big picture, identify the challenges, re-imagine and build a new email and messaging standard for Web3.  That someone was us. Mailchain is a multi-protocol platform for sending and receiving messages between blockchain addresses. It’s simple. The intuitive interface feels just like email—but it offers users much more. This evolution of email and messaging means we can finally declare independence for Internet communication.

‍Our Declaration for Internet Communication Independence

‍At Mailchain, we believe Internet communication needs to be simple, private, secure and decentralized. And it needs to work for everyone.

The Power to Own Your Identity

‍We believe Web3 identities will become commonplace. People, organizations, and brands will use them to prove identity online and offline. And any person or organization may have multiple identities, depending on context. Each identity creates another touch point for communication. Without compromising privacy, Mailchain simplifies sending and receiving messages for all blockchain identities through a unified inbox, bringing all related Web3 activity to one place.

The Power to Maintain Your Privacy

‍We believe individuals have the right to control their data. Mailchain is designed never to collect or store sensitive information. Mailchain messages cannot be accessed by us or third parties. Messages are end-to-end encrypted, private, and secure. Mailchain takes a privacy-first approach, which will extend to support traditional email systems and other channels over time. Users will gain control of all their Internet communication, past and present.

The Power to Communicate Freely

‍We believe in creating a new communications standard for the Internet. This standard gives anyone the ability to send messages (within limits) at no cost. And it gives users the ability to communicate privately, without fear of surveillance or censorship.  The protocol incentivizes third-party service providers to support key functions in a trustless manner and be rewarded. And it can be governed by its stakeholders (users, third-party providers, etc.). This results in a sustainable standard with a built-in “public good” mechanism.

Conclusion

It’s time. There’s finally an inbox designed with your privacy and security in mind. And it’s here to make your Web3 world a simpler, better place.  To get started with Mailchain, go to https://app.mailchain.com.