What would a killer email over nostr client look like?
Discussion
> /dev/null
Whats the advantages of running it over nostr?
SMTP and POP are hard to set up .. thus centralised Gmail etc .. nostr frees it ..
Also anti spam angle .. charge a sat per message .. access through any client ..
Great points. ty.
Id love an email client with a zap threshold to filter all the horse shit and im sure im not the only one.
Would the sat "postage" go to the recipent or relay? I think it would also benefit from a bridge to legacy email with a mechanism to add the postage on inbound mail. Maybe LNURL in the header? Outbound messages could include return postage for real conversations that you want a reply to.
To the relay .. the value is in holding the information. Clients would earn through value added service ( better display + more devices ) . Recipient gets the benefit of using the tool .
Bridging to the existing clients is an intermediary steps .. existing providers ( Gmail , Microsoft) would be forced to adapt if they want to keep their clout .. I guess nostr developers should least worry about this piece for one - it is hard to develop for all the email clients ..and second it would add to the mess ..and third the benefits wouldn't contrast clearly ..
presumably all the functionality we enjoy now, but be able to get your email in a nostr client, and do all sorts of things with it, restrict how it's delivered, etc.
if you want to have your emails in your NOSTR clients one needs a private mail client and relay running 24/7 to receive your mails and converts them to NOSTR notes back and fourth. Needs your mail credentials and nsec of course.
It will send the mails you receive as direct NOSTR messages to you. It would generate and store NOSTR key pairs for every mail counterpart and publish profile notes. Also verifies
It would also operate as relay of course, giving your NOSTR clients an inbox to send direct messages if you answer an email.
If you start writing a message to
That would need need a new software to be written and offers a seamless integration into any NOSTR client capable of direct messages without any changes.
I don't see a way to get rid of the private 24/7 running instance having mail credentials and nsec - even with a NOSTR protocol extension.
It would be awesome .. something like aerc should be the starting point https://aerc-mail.org/
Deadly
I hate email but there's definitely an advantage to being backwards compatible
You set up an email server, let's say postfix, then have a nostr account for that server. The server must be able to speak normal email protocols like SMTP or POP3, and must also be able to speak the Nostr protocol. Emails must be encrypted (NIP-44) as they will also be considered Nostr notes and therefore duplicated among relays. The email server can encrypt them itself before converting them to notes. Then any nostr client supporting NIP-44 encrypted direct messages should display them normally. The nostr client can reply normally, but will probably require some special formatting to indicate who the intended recipient is. Could eventually make a NIP for this so clients could handle this issue transparently.
Then you have to set MX records to point your domain to the Nostr email server and so all the normal email server stuff.
Working on this.