Dmail: End-to-End Encrypted Blockchain Email

At this time of data breaches and privacy concerns, DMail is a game-changing solution for safe, private online communication. It’s a distributed email service that keeps your conversations confidential when the transported messages are encrypted from end to end. 

Unlike regular email services, which are server-based, DMail is blockchain-based and guarantees the owner has the only keys to their data. 

This guide will introduce you to what DMail is, how it works (from a basic analogy to an in-depth technical breakdown), its main features, and who can benefit from this email solution.

DMail – What Does It Do?

Suppose you have a special mailbox that can only be opened by you and your best friend with a shared secret key. Every time you send a letter, you put it in a magic box that only your friend’s magic key can open. No one else can see what’s on the inside. 

That’s basically how DMail operates to act as a deterrent to keep messages private. In layman’s terms, DMail is a way to send messages in locked boxes (encrypted emails) over a network that nobody owns or controls (a decentralized blockchain). 

Only the one it was sent to can open the box and read the note. There’s no centralized server snooping on your letters or losing them, for the messages travel across a network secured by math and code that everyone trusts. It’s like having a super-secure system in which privacy is a given by design, so you share secrets without fear.

The Tech Behind DMail

For those curious about how DMail achieves this security and decentralization, let’s go behind the scenes. DMail is based on blockchain technology and smart contractual agreements, eliminating the need for an email server. 

When you DMail a message, it is cryptographically encoded using strong cryptographic algorithms, so that only the recipient’s private key will be able to decode the message. 

Then, the encoded message is dispersed to a blockchain or decentralized storage, rather than to a central server. Smart contracts maintain routing and access control of these messages. They authenticate sender and receiver on the network, enforce any policies (e.g., spam filtering, payment token), and restrict the message to be opened only by the addressee.

In DMail, the concept of identity is based on decentralized identifiers, which are usually your cryptocurrency wallet address, or a decentralized identity (DID)—not based on username/password. 

You “log in” by connecting the NCOG Wallet and proving your identity using cryptography through signatures. “That’s a good thing because there just aren’t any login credentials — in the traditional sense — to steal, and phishing is vastly more difficult when all the recipients of every message can be cryptographically verified.

The DMail blockchain aspect brings an immutable log for communications -each transaction (message) could be timestamped and published (at least its proof) on the chain- allowing it to be auditable and ‘tamper-proof’. 

Key Features of Dmail

Dmail has many things going on that together change how we can perceive email and digital communication. Herewith is a description of features that set DMail aside as a secure, user focused, blockchain email service:

End-to-End Encryption – Privacy by Design

All DMail messages are end-to-end encrypted, encrypting your messages from the time you hit “send” until the recipient unlocks it – ensuring they remain private. No one — not even DMail (the service) — can read or crack your messages. This guarantees complete confidentiality. 

There are two cryptographic keys at play here: your public key (to lock/encrypt messages to you) and your private key (to unlock/decrypt). So long as you keep your private key secure, your emails can only be read by you and your intended recipient. That’s a far cry from email providers, which typically scan emails or can view them in plaintext.

Web3 Wallet Integration (Decentralized Identity)

With DMail, your blockchain wallet is your identity. You don’t make a new username or password, you just plug in your NCOG Wallet to log in. 

There are two key advantages to wallet-based identity: 

• Security: Identification is performed using cryptographic signatures (i.e., you prove “it’s you” by signing a message with your private key) which is very difficult to counterfeit or phish.

• Privacy: You control how much personal information you share. DMail works with decentralized identity infrastructure, meaning you can even use decentralized IDs or domain names as your email address. In other words, your DMail inbox is linked to your blockchain account, and successfully bridges messaging with the world of crypto & DApps!

Blockchain Credential Network (No Central Servers)

DMail runs on a credential-based blockchain, which eliminates centralized email servers, third parties, and intermediaries. So long as you use your email provider’s app — or log in to its website — your email is out of your hands: You can’t send it, can’t encrypt it, can’t stop it from being surreptitiously torched by your provider. What are you going to do, not use email? 

In DMail, messages are transferred using decentralized protocols — like email “transactions” registered in a distributed ledger. 

Smart contracts act as an email server, processing delivery or enforcing restricted access control as well as initiating actions such as confirmations or notifications— all according to code that can’t be altered. 

Because of this blockchain backbone, there’s also no single point of failure and no company that can lock you out or read your data. The blockchain technology used by DMail...