New Blockchain Based Email System
Email remains one of the most important business tools in our daily lives and spam emails is one of its biggest problems.
I have 60 thousand emails in my email inbox. Most of my emails I would call soft spam, its marketing messages from entertainment, travel companies, etc. I receive job offers and vacation offers, shopping deals notifications and news of every kind. As much as I try to keep my inbox clear, it is a futile exercise. The problem with the current mail system boils down to the fact that it costs companies nothing to send out an email. As a result, we all need to content with all the emails coming to us, from outright fraud and scams to soft spam and email offers of every sort. We propose a new email ecosystem that will solve this problem where sending an email will have a real cost albeit a small one. With the solution we propose, these companies will have to be more selective when they send out their messages.
A solution to these problems could be an email service where sender must pay something to the receiver for each email. The payment could be very small, one cent for example or even smaller. But even one cent could make the cost prohibitive for spammers who sends out thousands of emails each day.
In a normal course of business, people usually receive roughly the same number if business emails as they send, so users will be paying for sending emails out and receiving payments with email replies. And if I know I am receiving emails that sender had to pay a fee to send it to me, I might take these emails more seriously.
To process these micro payments, a blockchain can be used. Emails could still be encrypted and remain private but blockchain can be used to process payments and proof of payment could be used as a condition to send an email. A percentage of these fees can be used to support the blockchain.
Every user will have to have a wallet connected to their email account. Every time a new message is sent, system would subtract the required payment from the wallet and forward txid as a proof of payment. Email recipient’s wallet will be credited with the amount received minus the transaction fee.
Going forward, additional option could be developed where legitimate marketing companies would register with this service, potentially pay an annual fee and pay lower fees per message to send email marketing emails. Also, different users of the system could set up their own thresholds and opt out of receiving messages that pay less then x. Executives and high net worth individuals could setup a higher threshold, say a dollar or even 10 dollars to receive emails. Alternatively, users can also setup low thresholds, even at zero and therefore receive every email sent to them.
Multiple email client providers can adapt this model and utilize our micro payment blockchain solution.
