We interviewed the team at Dmail, a highly professional start-up that has secured enormous funding, won a DFINITY grant, and won a Shanghai Hackathon prize.
What could be better than an unhackable email that receives airdrops and doubles as an NFT with value relative to the user profile and being able to send and receive tokens?
The future is here!
1. What attracted you initially to Blockchain?
When we look back over the last 100 years of global technological transformation, we can see that advances in science and technology have boosted human society's productivity, as well as provided enormous profits for venture capital. Each generation has its generational opportunities.
At this point, it is clear that blockchain technology is one of the most important and cutting-edge technologies of our day, with the ability to affect and potentially change the paradigm of our daily lives in every way in the future.
The crypto market, influenced by blockchain technology, is closer to the substance of the market, finance, and trade. It offers people a way to conduct transactions without trust, potentially improving the overall efficiency of the financial market. Although there will be many "gray" areas or bubbles in this market, I believe that as more mainstream institutions pay attention to this market and as more and more governments across the world begin to consider how to integrate the crypto market into the regulatory framework, this market will improve.
Last but not least, such a fast and emerging market means that there are many opportunities to explore. Many traditional market applications may come and develop on the Blockchain in the future. At the same time, crypto initiatives may be able to fix the pain points of traditional applications, attracting more capital and institutions' interest. Dmail Network is likewise intended to address some of the issues that exist in the conventional mailbox sector. These are the primary reasons why I believe the blockchain market will continue to grow.
2. Of all the platforms you could have chosen, why did you decide to build on the Internet Computer?
In particular, Dmail considers the following as the main reasons for building on the Internet Computer:
2.1 Low gas fees
Who wants to pay for every action and/or email sent? Here, there is no need for any payment to be made when interfacing with DApps built on the Internet Computer due to its reverse gas fee model. Imagine having to pay a fee (no matter how small) every time you need to send and/or receive an email.
2.2 Strong Scalability
Dmail believes that DFINITY is well ahead (compared to, say, ETH 2.0) in terms of 'sharding' whereby subnets (or shards) on the Internet Computer can be merged, removed, and in particular added (as network demand grows) without 'the need to stop Dapp services during the expansion process.'
2.3 Interoperability
Chain key cryptography opens up a world of possibilities for dApps to inter-operate with dApps on the Internet Computer, with dApps on other blockchains including Ethereum (and more so with the planned direct integration with Ethereum).
In addition to the above, Dmail is developing a new standard based on MIME specifically to bridge Dmail (and/or any other decentralized email application on the Internet Computer) with traditional email.
3. How long has your company been established, and what is your business model based on?
Actually, we are not a company but a "team". Our team was not formed long ago, and at first, we all thought it was a good idea to combine blockchain technology with mailbox applications to solve a long-standing pain point for the mailbox market.
However, as the development progresses and as we learn more about DFINITY, we have a deeper understanding of the market and technology, and we think that decentralized mailboxes may become an important tool and connection channel for the future market, especially for "web3.0" which people are expecting at present, so we will focus on exploring various functions of blockchain mailboxes in the future. We will also dig deeper around the various functions of blockchain mailboxes and eventually turn it into a web 3.0 application.
In addition, Dmail Network mailbox is built on the DFINITY blockchain, which determines that we will interact and connect more with the DFINITY ecosystem in the future. While we develop our own functions, we may also consider building bridges to connect with more DFINITY ecosystem applications.
4. What makes your company marketable, and what will ensure its long-term success?
For Dmail Network, I think there are two core elements to maintain success:
1. Solving problems around real demands.
2. Ecological growth.
For the demand, although the traditional mailbox is widely used, the disadvantage of centralized formation is obvious, all the information from users actually exists in the centralized domain company, which will means a great security risk. And in the field of privacy communication, applications like telegram have appeared, but there is no decentralized application in the mailbox field that is actually willing to be used by more people.
In addition to the future development, many people in this industry believe that the Internet will evolve to the web3.0 era, which has a definite feature: data confirmation and information interconnection. In other words, in the web3.0 era, the connection barrier caused by the centralized node will be disregarded significantly, and everyone will have a digital identity on the network, through which they can freely travel between different applications and complete the interaction between different people, things, and applications.
On this platform, we can see various functions including communication, information and asset trading, etc. Meanwhile, through the decentralized storage mechanism in the DFINITY blockchain, users can enjoy the convenience of web 3.0 and be guaranteed their information's security and privacy.
From the ecological point of view, Dmail Network is the first mailbox application on the DFINITY blockchain, we will firstly design functions around the ecology of DFINITY, and incorporate more applications in the ecology into the functions and services of Dmail Network. Next, we will do more cross-chain& multi-chain functions and applications, so that the decentralized mailbox can be connected to Ethereum or even more blockchains, and truly become a web3.0 tool.
5. What challenges have you faced while building your company?
Now that we set up the team, we are looking for partners who have the same development philosophy and are skillful and professional in their sector. Therefore, although we have some difficulties in the process of developing the project, we finally completed the challenge with our ability, persistence, and belief.
For us, the greater challenge may come from the external environment. Because our project is global, but the policies of each region in the world are different. In the promotion of the project, we need to pay great attention to the different policy requirements of each region.
The sudden policy requirements of some important countries may also affect the local promotion of our project and the attitude of our investors towards the follow-up development, which may be the biggest challenge we face.
At the same time, DFINITY is still at a relatively early stage, and faces many problems in development, especially from the perspective of language (RUST/MOTOKO) implementation, such as no complete documentation, no best path for technical implementation, etc. so developers are still in the figuring out stage and development cycle and time vary.
6. What overall vision do you have? Do you have a roadmap? If so, what does it involve?
We have clear roadmap management for the current development of Dmail Network. The above is the overall roadmap of the project in the next year. We will push the progress of the project according to the above schedule.
For the vision of the project, as mentioned earlier, we hope that Dmail Network, as a communication tool for Web3.0, thus lowering the barrier for users to enter the crypto world and allowing them to use the Blockchain like the Internet. We will become a comprehensive platform integrating multiple functions and information.
On this platform, we can see multiple functions including communication, information, asset transaction, and so on. At the same time, through the decentralized storage mechanism on the DFINITY blockchain, users could enjoy the convenience of the Web3.0 and ensure their information's security and privacy.
7. What advantages do you believe you have over other competitors?
The figure above shows some advantages of Dmail Network over Gmail and Protonmail.
At present, in the blockchain mailbox market, the main competitors are Ledgermail and Protonmail. Although these two decentralized mailboxes come to the market earlier, they do not squeeze the market share, which gives us room for competition and development.
From a functional view, Dmail Network makes up for the shortcomings of the former two mailboxes. First of all, Dmail Network has been able to send and receive emails to/with traditional mailboxes, which could expand our potential users not limited in the scope of encryption market and breaks the data silos between different mailboxes.
In addition, from the beginning, Dmail Network was designed to adapt to the development of Web 3.0. In the future, Dmail Network will be a comprehensive platform that could include the function among information exchange and acquisition, asset transaction, and the DApp of DFINITY ecological interaction.
Third, the Dmail Network mailbox is the first NFT mailbox in the market, which means each mailbox name is an NFT, increasing the collection, interest, and transaction of the mailbox in the future. These are very unique places for Dmail Network.
8. Tell us about the team
As mentioned above, we are looking for like-minded partners with unique abilities. This makes me feel very lucky. Our team is very open, and everyone has accumulated in their own field for a long time, which makes us often encounter some new inspirations during work. I think that is my most cherished part of the whole project development process. Our team currently consists of 9 members, each responsible for a different business segment, which makes it a more complementary and complete team.
9. What advice do you have for anyone working in the same space as you?
To be honest, I feel flattered by such a question. So far, I'm just a common practitioner in the blockchain industry. I'm not afraid to give advice, but I think the biggest thing about Blockchain is that its a new industry. Just as an old Chinese saying goes, "If you can improve yourself in a day, do so each day, forever building on improvement." In this industry, we should keep curiosity, maintain to learn new technologies, and open up new fields, which is exactly the requirement and motivation for me.
Of course, I suggest that if people are willing to go for development in Blockchain or DFINITY, they still need a lot of research and evaluation to find the right timing and track, because sometimes the choice is more important than effort. Just like our current preference for DFINITY, because we believe it will be the new entrance in the web 3.0 era in the future, and it is difficult for any application to exist separately.
10. What other projects building on the Internet Computer are you most excited about?
Unlike other blockchains, DFINITY is more focused on practical applications, which is one of the reasons we chose to deploy Dmail Network on it. At present, the whole ecosystem has begun to develop gradually. Fleek and DSVR are still the two DApps that impress me the most.
Fleek claims to be the "Blockchain version of Netlify," so it functions much like Netlify in that it allows users to build websites in a convenient way while helping users cut costs. The difference is that Fleek hosts data on blockchain protocol layers such as DFINITY and IPFS, which avoids potential problems with centralization and provides an entry point for Web3.0.
DSVR has been called a decentralized Reddit, providing a testing ground for decentralized content creation. When we talk about blockchains or decentralization right now, we tend to adopt the form of centralization. For the future, especially in the web3.0 era, the content created by decentralized formation is likely to be a very hot area. We've talked about a lot of metaverse today, which require a lot of content to fill. if it can be worked through, the development room for the DSVR will become very large.
11. Do you have any plans to collaborate with other projects building on the Internet Computer?
It's pretty certain that Dmail Network's future will be eco-oriented, which will inevitably involve collaboration with other projects and even cross-chain projects. In the future, on the platform of Dmail Network, we will launch functions such as information subscription of other DApps, receiving project airdrops, and even establishing the IMO function. However, the road needs to be taken step by step. We will gradually advance our project according to the roadmap mentioned above. Please also pay close attention to the progress of Dmail Network project.
12. Do you have any token sale planned for the future? If so, when? Can you give details?
This is a topic of interest, but we don't seem to have quite figured out how to explain it, because at this stage the Dmail Network team is more focused on product design and technology development, and as you know, development on DFINITY is not an easy task.
However, we have great news that Dmail Network has closed funding from a number of investors, which will accelerate the development of Dmail Network's product and technology as well as the expansion of the market. But we are not sure if we will launch our own token, it needs to be a comprehensive consideration, after all, Dmail Network is a tool product, user use and experience is important.
Perhaps you can understand it as similar to Uniswap, DYDX, and ENS. If we have the latest information next we will be the first to inform the outside through our official channel, you can continue to follow us.
13. What are your short and long-term achievements and targets?
For the short-term achievement, we successfully won first place at DFINITY Track of the Wanxiang Hackathon competition, and obtained a grant from the DFINITY Foundation! There is the aforementioned first stage of financing that we just completed, and we are very fortunate to have received encouragement from the market.
As mentioned in the previous development section, the original intention of Dmail Network project is to use blockchain technology to solve some pain points in the traditional mailboxes, and to comply with the technical requirements of the Web3.0, as well as provide users with Internet tools in the new era. Therefore, our long-term goal is to continuously promote the development of Dmail Network and make it a blockchain mailbox that can not only be applied in the crypto market but also be applied by more people in the traditional market.
14. What is an NFT mailbox? How can I understand it?
NFT is one of the most discussed topics this year, but most of the NFTs we see are displayed in the form of PNG, TXT, etc., which seems to be just the tip of the iceberg of NFT. Dmail Network is defining every mailbox account as an NFT, which expands the expression form of NFTs, and at the same time makes mailboxes have the value attribute of asset trading besides social attributes. You can refer to ENS as an example, every NFT mailbox you hold in the future will be the key to the web 3.0 world.
In addition, the NFT mailbox of Dmail Network opens up new expansion in functions, for example, users holding an NFT mailbox can send and receive emails with any Internet mailbox, expand storage space, receive airdrops, participate in IMO, identify user identity level and so on.
So, in the world of Dmail Network, NFT mailboxes are keys to entering the web3.0 world and enjoy various benefits and identification user identity information brought from the new world.
15. Since NFT mailboxes could be used in trading, how does Dmail Network guarantee the privacy safety of the owners who will exchange the email name?
Thank you, this is a very core question, and I will answer it from several angles.
First, Dmail Network is designed with 2 identities, one is identity and one is alias account, both are uniquely bound to each other, when the user triggers a message for the first time, he needs to enter both identity and alias account, and only when both are correct can it work.
Secondly, the NFT transaction we mentioned is actually an alias account transaction, that is, A's account may be sold to B, but A's identity is unchanged, so A's assets and information will migrate with the identity and will not be exposed to B. For B, the account will be a brand new existence.
Then, when A plans to trade the alias account or has completed the alias account trade, he or she can inform his or her friends in the address book via Dmail Network's alert service so that they can capture the information in time to interrupt sending messages to that address again. Of course, Dmail Network also provides a detection service to inform the list of friends of a traded alias account in a timely manner.
These are the core features, but we also have some secondary features to ensure the privacy of user information, which is a very complex project, including encryption algorithms, transaction processes, confirmation of delivery, etc.
16. Does Dmail Network have any other planned moves this year after releasing the demo?
Okay, we want the Dmail Network to be a permanent "monster", that's just a joke, it's just to express our team's determination to do this, it's our attitude to choose a direction and be willing to devote ourselves to it.
Then in the short term, we will have some big moves, including the beta site launch, Bounty event, community AMA, NFT alias account pre-sale and auction (similar to ENS), etc. We will also continue to accept powerful investors, and hope you can push the bright future of Dmail Network with us, and hope Dmail Network We hope that Dmail Network will become the star of the DFINITY ecosystem and a key player in the web 3.0 world.
Thank you very much for taking the time to read about us today. Dmail Network will continue to work hard to create more valuable products for you, the wonderful Dfinity Community!
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