WTF is Mailstr and how does it help separate your email from your person.

E-Mails used to be great. They were your entry into the digital world. They made communication easier, solved the problem of shareable digital identity and also allowed people to communicate with each other without divulging personal information. Your email has become one of the most persistent pieces of your digital identity and it is increasingly becoming a bridge between your digital and your personal self.

Almost every new service requires an email and it’s so hard to get a new one. Most prominent providers like Gmail, Outlook, would want your phone number. Even privacy preserving ones like Proton and Tuta sometimes want another “verified email” or make you go through a painstaking verification process of endless CAPTCHAs and almost never let you be in peace if you used a VPN to create your email. It almost feels like getting a passport. All this, for “spam protection”.

And not to add how clear text emails are just a honeypot for AI training, most email providers don’t even claim end to end encrypted storage, and those that do while definitely better are still centralized silos, holding your information.

How does mailstr solve this?

• First, we let your identity be your nostr keypair, this absolves us from having to be the masters of your data, don’t like us? Move to a different provider.
• Second, We ask you to pay a small but meaningful amount to purchase an alias, this helps us keep the servers up, while also making sure our domains reputation isn’t that of a “spam email provider”.
• Thirdly, We let you choose your own storage for your emails and we make sure that your mails are properly encrypted even in the relays of your choice. This ensures that you access your emails received via a mailstr alias even when you’re not using mailstr anymore.
• Also lastly, it’s based on this amazing spec by @Russell , which means now even your emails are interoperable! Don’t like our client? Use Nmail (Russel’s client) and your emails should still be available to you!

So what’s the catch?

No real catches, but some things we should point out:

• Even if the emails are stored e2ee, clear text emails are still visible to the bridge, that’s just the nature of emails. Having said that, we do not store the mails after they’ve been relayed to your relays.
• Your emails are tied to your nostr identity, lose that and you lose your emails.
• Choose your relays wisely, they are your regular DM relays, delivery maybe hampered by bad choices and make sure to read up on their retention policies, hosting your own is a great option and private relays are good options too.

Now, while this is absolutely amazing for the end user, we also believe that mails are the missing link! Nostr has been its own isolated bubble, in our own sealed off protocol just talking to each other, this bridge gives us an opportunity to connect with a decades old and established mechanism that regular folks are already comfortable using. This gives us an amazing chance to reach them and let the normies know we are here!

Cheers to the future my friends! Stack happiness!