Decent Mail

Blockchain-Based Email Service built on Polygon

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Inspiration

Since, the invention of the email in the last century, the protocol and running mechanism of Web2 emails have not changed fundamentally. Web2 mail server uses SMTP protocols to send emails to the recipient's addresses. But there are some critical issues that have not been solved yet in Web2: the lack of email protection and spam flood. Centralized servers manage your data. The downside of this is that users provide personal and confidential data to the companies that control these platforms. Email spam has also grown significantly over the last decade. In 2014, it was estimated that 90% of the emails were spam. Fortunately, in Web3, The blockchains such as Ethereum, are a trusted platform in which we can store fully encrypted emails and it will also reduce spam emails flood.

What it does

Users will click the 'Get Started' button to connect the 'Decent Mail' with their Metamask wallet. It will redirect to the main page where inbox, sent, and spam sections are provided. Users compose and write their emails and will send them to recipients by providing their wallet addresses. Users can also attach files with emails. Attached files will be stored on the Filecoin network. The attached files can be downloaded from the decentralized IPFS network. As the smart contract is deployed on Polygon Mumbai. Users must have MATIC coins to send emails. It will reduce the spam flood as crypto coins are used for sending emails. In some cases, if someone receives suspicious emails from an unknown address, they can report the address as spam too.

How we built it

The frontend part was built using React, and Bootstrap. The fronted part was deployed on Vercel. Smart contract was written in Solidity using Remix IDE and Ether.js was used to connect the frontend with the smart contract [Deployed on Polygon Mumbai using Alchemy API]. Web3.storage API was used for storing attached files data on persistent long-term storage provided by Filecoin

Challenges we ran into

  1. Connecting frontend with the smart contract using Ether.js
  2. Filtering spam emails on smart contract.
  3. Attaching files and storing them on persistent long-term storage Filecoin.
  4. Download the attached files available on the decentralized IPFS network.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

It will reduce the spam flood and protect the users' data on the smart contract.

What we learned

  1. Learnt about Solidity and Polygon architecture.
  2. Sending and fetching data using Ether.js
  3. How to deploy solidity on Polygon.

What's next for Decent Mail

  1. UI Improvements
  2. Optimizing gas fees for transactions
  3. Adding Username along with wallet address

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