There are great many messaging apps out there, but email, despite being one of the oldest technologies, remains probably the most important one. Email is the key to our digital identity: various studies show that on average 100 to 150 other accounts are linked to a single email address in the US. The unpleasant truth most people forget is that their email does not belong to them. Your very own name in the Web, along with all the associated data, is controlled and therefore owned by the technology provider. Meanwhile, unlike the early days of the Internet, we do have a technology that allows an entirely different level of data ownership — it’s decentralized networks. A big change in the world of email is imminent.
Eppie team is thrilled to announce Soft Launch early this year! Our ultimate mission is to withdraw private data from the servers of the Big Tech and give it back to its rightful owners — the users. It might sound like a long shot, but we’ll see.
So, what is Eppie? Eppie is a next generation email — encrypted, open protocol, and decentralized. One might ask: encryption does exist on email market, e. g. ProtonMail; SMTP/IMAP protocols are open standards already; and email is decentralized by design — so what exactly do we mean by ‘next generation’?
It is the p2p network
With Google and Microsoft dominating the market it may sound unusual but conventional email was conceived to be decentralized. Anybody can run their own email server that conforms to the protocols. The servers connect to each other and make up a federation — network of networks, not governed by any single entity.
Although this still holds true at the protocol level, for the end-user of any modern email service it is as centralized as it can get. Server has all the authority, to use the service you must trust it regardless of whether you actually do.
Eppie is different because it works entirely in a p2p network with no clients or servers at all. Each user is a node of a network. Each node has equal rights and responsibilities. Eppie encrypts the message, breaks it to pieces and stores them on random nodes of the network — the other users’ machines. Trust is not an issue anymore, because there are no authorities with special access rights in the network.
Encryption is not optional
As for the encryption, it is also allowed by current email standard. One can even set up PGP encryption. So where is Eppie different?
Asymmetric cryptography is in the core of the system, it is not optional. Public keys serve as addresses — only the paired private key allows the recipient to retrieve the encrypted fragments from the network, rebuild and decrypt the data. No one else can see the account or any of its contents, including us, the developers.
And nobody can allow or disallow a user to their account. Authentication and authorisation both happen locally on users machine, when Eppie decrypts the message. The fact of decryption is the authentication — the concept is known as Authenticated encryption.
Ultimate interoperability
What about the open standard? Normal email is based on a set of open protocols, which played a pivotal role in the success of the technology by enabling interoperability among different systems and fostered a scalable, innovative, and competitive ecosystem. These standards allowed users on diverse networks to seamlessly exchange messages, avoided vendor lock-in, and promoted community collaboration for the long-term stability of email as a fundamental communication tool on the internet. Again, this is a 40 years old news.
What is new with Eppie is that it not only sets another open standard but also conforms to multiple existing messaging protocols, both decentralized and traditional ones. At launch Eppie supports Ethereum address standard and traditional (centralized) email. Eppie user can receive messages from Gmail, or any other conventional email server, thank to our Hybrid Address feature. To our knowledge none of the existing decentralized messaging systems went that far in the ability to connect Web2 and Web3 worlds. With 4+ billion traditional email users out there it is certainly one of the most important yet unresolved problems in the decentralized email market.
Impact
Here’s the tricky part. Good products succeed by following user needs. Next generation technologies — create new needs. So, our best hopes and excitement aside, we won’t know until after the fact. But we know a decentralized email with actual account and data ownership has everything to make a tremendous impact on how people interact with technologies. If you are interested have a look at this article where we share our thoughts on how the modern concept of privacy is actually a big medieval fraud and why data ownership can mark a change as big as a switch from feudal law to capitalism. Just wait for it! Meanwhile feel free to subscribe here.