Interview: How EtherMail ($EMT) Found 2M Users By Offering Web3 Email

In the past week, how many spam e-mails did you delete from your inbox? Ten? Fifteen? A hundred?

An overflowing inbox, crammed with newsletters that we once subscribed to but lost interest in or social media applications sending us a stream of notification reminders, has helped dilute the value of emails.

And yet email was one of the first systems that had notions of decentralization, privacy, and owning your data — is it not ripe for a Web3 version?

EtherMail thinks so—as do two million users. Speaking with Techopedia, Shant Kevonian, the CEO and co-founder of EtherMail, discusses a potential new future—  a  Web3 e-mail platform that prioritizes privacy and anonymity and offers pseudonymous features that users of the best decentralized wallets will already be aware of.

About Shant Kevonian

Shant Kevonian is the co-founder and CEO of EtherMail. He is responsible for setting the company’s strategy, directing its product vision, developing company culture, and managing its agendas.

Shant developed high-performance, proprietary algorithms for several startups in his decade-long career as a CTO. He was a senior technical advisor for the interactive virtual concert platform SoundStage.fm, acquired by Audius in 2022.

Table of Contents Table of Contents

1. About Shant Kevonian
2. Key Takeaways
3. 'E-Mail Was Always a Decentralized Solution'
4. The Big Discourse of Encrypted Online Communication
5. Opt-in Advertising Vs. Spam
6. On the Path to Web3 Mass Adoption: EtherMail Surpasses 2 Million Users
7. The Bottom Line
8. FAQs
9. References

Show Full Guide

Table of Contents

1. About Shant Kevonian
2. Key Takeaways
3. 'E-Mail Was Always a Decentralized Solution'
Show Full Guide
4. The Big Discourse of Encrypted Online Communication
5. Opt-in Advertising Vs. Spam
6. On the Path to Web3 Mass Adoption: EtherMail Surpasses 2 Million Users
7. The Bottom Line
8. FAQs
9. References

‘E-Mail Was Always a Decentralized Solution’

Q: How is EtherMail different from “traditional” e-mails?

A: One of the first things that sets EtherMail apart from Gmail, Hotmail, or any other e-mail provider is that those platforms use some sort of common identifier or username, such as first name, last name at Gmail, and a password.

Typically, your e-mail address is associated quite closely with you as an individual, and people would not typically use a pseudonym even though they could.

EtherMail, on the other hand, does not require a common identifier, username, or pseudonym. It uses your wallet address — so it is anonymous as long as you keep your wallet address anonymous.

And because EtherMail uses a user’s wallet address, it allows users to maintain their entire anonymous flow within the Web3 ecosystem.

In addition, because we use blockchain technologies, the ownership of e-mail accounts comes through a user’s decentralized wallet and their wallet signature, so users will not run into other issues, such as forgetting their password.

Finally, this also leads to blockchain encryption, meaning all e-mails are encrypted — unlike Google or Hotmail, which may read e-mails because they want to fuel their advertising algorithms.

Q: Can you briefly tell me about how EtherMail started?

A: The idea comes from a while back. While I and Gerald Heydenreich (co-founder of EtherMail) were working with non-fungible tokens (NFTs), I had an idea and asked my brother if it would make sense to have a Web3 e-mail address as well.

After about two years of ruminating on the idea, I decided to execute it — and it’s a good thing I did not execute it earlier since the market and the community were not ready for such a solution too early on.

Our initial thought was: “What was the best solution in Web2? It was e-mail!”

E-mail was always a decentralized solution – you can always take and have control over your data.

It is one of the first decentralized solutions after the Internet, so we just decided to fully bring it into Web3.

The Big Discourse of Encrypted Online Communication

Q: Speaking of encryption, especially with everything that has gone down with Telegram and Pavel Durov’s arrest in France, can you walk me through the balance between privacy and anonymity on EtherMail compared to others?

A: It is important to separate Telegram from Proton because, if I am not mistaken, Telegram does not always offer encrypted messaging.

It is censorship-resistant to moderation, but unless users are using secret chats, the application is not fully encrypted.

Proton, on the other hand, is encrypted, but it still has the ability to access the metadata associated with the contents of e-mails.

I have also heard of cases where Proton had divulged information to governments. Additionally, when users log into Proton they have to use a password, which if often stored on a computer.

In EtherMail’s case, all the information is linked to a user’s wallet address, and we do not have a single trace of that information on our server.

So, even if a government came to us at this moment, there is no single key that we could actually give them.

Opt-in Advertising Vs. Spam

Q: While I was looking at your project online, I noticed that opt-in advertising is one of the key selling points for EtherMail. How do you see this approach is changing the dynamic between traditional e-mail marketing and what EtherMail is doing?

A: So, there is such a thing as spam, which comes from computers that have a sort of vulnerability and are not properly configured.

However, people tend to call everything spam – no matter whether it is good or bad. A lot of times people even consider spam the fact that they subscribed to the Amazon newsletter and have not read it in a week – so their inbox tends to get “spammed” with unopened e-mails.

This is also normal when it comes to e-mail marketing because companies want to try and sell as many products to consumers as they can.

And while Europe tried to solve the issue of “spam” with GDPR [General Data Protection Regulation] and double consent, it did not prove to be a viable solution, because e-mail protocols, by nature, are like a blacklist solution where anyone can write to users unless they say otherwise.

Now, what EtherMail does, is it takes the blacklist approach and does the opposite of what traditional e-mails do by blacklisting everyone by default.

This gives users the ability to physically choose who can send them e-mails or not.

We have a mechanism called the “Paywall”, a virtual toll, which can be bypassed by paying tokens, a reward for sending an e-mail to a user.

On the Path to Web3 Mass Adoption: EtherMail Surpasses 2 Million Users

Q: I recently saw that EtherMail surpassed 2 million users. Congratulations! What would you attribute to such a rapid growth?

A:  Thank you. I think our growth really comes from solving a real need within the Web3 space – communication and the ability for people to maintain their anonymous flow within the Web3 space.

Many Web3 companies want a means of communication, while users want to remain anonymous in the whole flow and keep their identities separate.

It also helps users separate themselves from the “traditional” world from the Web3 world without fear of getting scammed.

And because EtherMail is linked to a user’s wallet address, this allows Web3 companies, especially within the NFT space, to reach and communicate with active and current holders with ease since wallet addresses are oftentimes available for viewing on the blockchain but are not linked to a user’s identity.

The Bottom Line

As a journalist, my email address can be found pretty easily online, so I, too, receive a lot of emails. While many are interesting reads, my spam inbox does tend to get filled up with the occasional “You just won $2 million!!!”

So, when I found out about EtherMail, my curiosity was piqued – could this truly be the solution to receiving more valuable communication in your inbox?

EtherMail has seen success with onboarding Web3 companies and users, while Web2 users may remain more cautious.

However, in the long run, as more people continue to learn about such solutions, Web3 adoption could be available to any household — right in their inbox.

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