3045: EtherMail and the Web3 Revolution: Anonymous, Encrypted, and Decentralized

[00:00:04] How can technology evolve for the Web3 era?

[00:00:08] Well, today I want to explore this question with the CEO and founder of EtherMail, who is at the forefront of creating a decentralized email platform that promises to reshape how we communicate in a blockchain-driven world.

[00:00:24] His name is Shant. He's waiting for us in Barcelona today.

[00:00:27] And with a vision that brings together the anonymous communication and personalized messaging, EtherMail is building a next generation of email tailored for Web3.

[00:00:39] But what led Shant and his co-founder to create a solution aimed at transforming how we all interact, but in a decentralized space?

[00:00:48] And more importantly, how does EtherMail plan to bridge the gap between the familiarity of Web2 email and the forward-thinking needs of Web3 users?

[00:00:59] Today, we're going to explore the challenges and innovations EtherMail is addressing, including their mission to deliver a more secure, tokenized email experience,

[00:01:10] while also tackling issues like spam overload, consensual marketing, and user anonymity.

[00:01:16] And we'll also discuss the significance of securing backing from some pretty big names out there like Tim Draper,

[00:01:23] and how support like this fuels EtherMail's vision.

[00:01:27] So, what lies ahead for email communication in a decentralized internet?

[00:01:32] And how do EtherMail plan to shape that future and bridge the worlds of Web2 and Web3?

[00:01:40] Well, enough for me.

[00:01:42] Let's get today's guest on and find out more.

[00:01:45] So, a massive warm welcome to the show.

[00:01:48] Can you just tell everyone listening a little about who you are and what you do?

[00:01:52] Hey, everyone.

[00:01:53] I'm Shant, CEO and founder of EtherMail.

[00:01:56] I've been working on EtherMail for the last two years, two years and a half, something like that.

[00:02:00] Basically, making a decentralized email solution that allows people to communicate anonymously via the blockchain.

[00:02:08] Well, I'm so glad you joined me on the podcast today.

[00:02:11] I connected with your founder on here a few years back,

[00:02:14] and it's great to see the progress that you've made here since our last conversation.

[00:02:19] But for listeners that are maybe unfamiliar with your platform,

[00:02:23] can you just share that origin story with me and what prompted you to launch EtherMail?

[00:02:29] Yeah, absolutely.

[00:02:29] So, back in the day, my co-founder Gary, we were involved in the blockchain space,

[00:02:35] doing some fees, participating with some companies that were doing it,

[00:02:38] and helping them execute their visions.

[00:02:40] And at one point, I really saw that there was a communication issue

[00:02:43] because everything's running on Telegram, on Discord, Twitter.

[00:02:47] And we saw like, oh, wow, this is pectic.

[00:02:49] And if someone bought your NFT, and then they resold it,

[00:02:51] and then the groups had very bad communication, basically.

[00:02:54] It would just get reduced to like a wet moon.

[00:02:57] So, it was large volumes of messages, but very little value, you could say.

[00:03:02] And so, we set out to try and improve that.

[00:03:05] And one of the ways that we thought was the best way to do it was actually email,

[00:03:08] because it's rich in content, it's personalized,

[00:03:12] and you don't get all this extra noise and weird signaling, FOMOs, and BUD.

[00:03:16] And so, you get the message directly from the company that's intending to talk to you.

[00:03:20] And so, we really set out to do that and deliver an improved experience

[00:03:24] that is for the new internet, which is the Web3 experience.

[00:03:27] So, upgrading that old protocol to a new era, and that's what we set out to do.

[00:03:32] And several years on since our last conversation, we're talking about this stuff.

[00:03:36] The Web3 landscape continues to evolve, and there's so many great things happening in this space.

[00:03:42] But what is it you feel is needed to drive that mass adoption?

[00:03:46] It's something we keep coming back to.

[00:03:47] But how do we drive that mass adoption, and how are you contributing to this effort?

[00:03:52] Not just to AetherMail, but all that entire Web3 landscape too.

[00:03:56] Of course.

[00:03:57] So, we sort of see it in a way such as the printing press, the fax, the mobile phone.

[00:04:03] Communication is something that is needed in every industry to accelerate its growth.

[00:04:08] And so, let's say that the whole Web3 space has not been very good at having its mechanism

[00:04:16] for growth via communication.

[00:04:19] And once a proper child is used and adopted, then the growth accelerates over the coming years.

[00:04:25] That's been proven all the time in the printing press, as we mentioned, and other technologies.

[00:04:30] And so, the first thing we strive to do is to enable this anonymous communication,

[00:04:34] because as tokens or NFTs change hands, and when people are anonymous,

[00:04:38] maybe they're still interested, maybe they're not.

[00:04:40] All of this is something that needs to be solved, because when you have an email address in a normal Web2 or a phone number,

[00:04:46] and someone unsubscribes, okay, it's the end of the story.

[00:04:50] But in this case, there's also changing of hands, the interested assets.

[00:04:53] And so, it becomes a very...

[00:04:55] It's a much more complicated story.

[00:04:57] So, we set up to facilitate this.

[00:04:59] And then the other part is to encourage even more adoption.

[00:05:03] There needs to be things that are much more familiar to the Web2 industry,

[00:05:07] because creating something complex, like connecting a wallet,

[00:05:11] and signing with this hardware wallet or this other thing,

[00:05:15] it probably scares a lot of Web2 people.

[00:05:19] And reducing that barrier to entry with a more familiar user experience is probably very important.

[00:05:26] And so, Ethermail is setting out to do that via an email plan that works on functions and fields kind of like a Gmail.

[00:05:32] And that can pretty much be a good way of enticing users to come in.

[00:05:37] While we can facilitate, let's say, the user experience, we can improve that, right?

[00:05:42] We can improve the communication mechanism.

[00:05:45] And all of these things, I think it's really up to the Web3 communities that are emerging

[00:05:50] to make the killer use cases beyond that, right?

[00:05:54] So, just like maybe Hotmail existed or Gmail existed, those are great use cases within themselves.

[00:06:01] But eventually, something else had to come out or a series of other solutions had to come out,

[00:06:06] which then Gmail, Hotmail, and all these other solutions sort of facilitated,

[00:06:10] whether it was a killer, unique e-commerce like Amazon that facilitated things.

[00:06:15] And then you get your receipts via email, or then you've had a social media, but you logged in with your email, etc., etc.

[00:06:21] E-mail is just one component which we facilitate, but eventually other applications need to come out and merge

[00:06:28] that add to this utility of this baseline of communication.

[00:06:32] Fantastic.

[00:06:33] And before you came on the podcast, I was just getting back up to speed with some of the news surrounding Ethermail

[00:06:39] since we last spoke.

[00:06:41] And one of the things that stood out to me was you've secured financial backing from some big investment heavyweights out there.

[00:06:48] One in particular stood out, Tim Draper.

[00:06:50] But can you expand on that?

[00:06:52] And how significant is that seal of approval for you and your company?

[00:06:57] Yeah.

[00:06:57] So for us, it was a real, let's say, statement of confidence, I think you could say,

[00:07:04] that there is something to be done is the first one.

[00:07:08] And the second one is not only is there something to be done in the industry or what we're working on,

[00:07:13] but the second one is the confidence that we can be the project that solves the fundamental issue.

[00:07:22] Just as these companies have been invested in Tesla and space sites and other things of big name

[00:07:30] are just a testament to no one.

[00:07:32] When he believes in something, they can go on to be the next big thing.

[00:07:37] And so for us, it's a confidence boost.

[00:07:40] You could say a belief that there's something to be done and that we can maybe solve the problem.

[00:07:47] And also just around the corner, our inboxes in the Web2 world are going to be bombarded with Black Friday

[00:07:54] and Cyber Monday emails.

[00:07:56] Anyone we bought one item from six years ago is still going to be bombarding our inboxes.

[00:08:01] And I think this is a great moment to maybe introduce the value that you're offering at ETHML

[00:08:06] and that mission to introduce this new framework for email economics and also consensual marketing.

[00:08:14] Can you just expand on that mission and what it means for listeners?

[00:08:18] Absolutely.

[00:08:18] So for us, one of the biggest things that we set out to do was to make sure that ETHML can be as secure

[00:08:25] of a communication channel as possible while maintaining the benefits of existing email.

[00:08:32] And one of those is very much e-commerce newsletters or offerings that can give you promo discounts,

[00:08:38] information on new things that are happening.

[00:08:41] Well, yeah, newsletters and all of this, right, has a lot of value.

[00:08:46] However, there are situations where companies can abuse this.

[00:08:50] And then you start considering what would be legitimate emails just because they start accumulating.

[00:08:56] So many start accumulating as you start considering it spam, even though it's not spam, right?

[00:09:02] And because of the sheer volume of what you have to go through and read,

[00:09:05] you just have this 100,000 emails on read.

[00:09:08] So the way we set out to solve this is actually that we have consensual marketing.

[00:09:13] And consensual marketing doesn't just apply to ETHML.

[00:09:17] And my belief, it applies to many other industries, including browsers like Brave that offers an ad blocker.

[00:09:26] But you can consent into receiving certain types of advertisements.

[00:09:29] And this goes beyond just these channels, right?

[00:09:32] It can be on many different mediums.

[00:09:35] And so the idea behind it really for me is that you can get a limited dose of relevant advertisement in which,

[00:09:44] in our case, you get tokens for the invasion of your personal inbox.

[00:09:49] Which means if I'm investing time into seeing something, whether I'm interested or not interested,

[00:09:55] it's relevant, I buy or not, my time has some value.

[00:09:59] And that is kind of the thought experiment, the framework in which we're operating,

[00:10:05] where people's time from anywhere is valuable.

[00:10:10] And in some way, shape or form, they should receive some sort of reward.

[00:10:15] And another thing I noticed when playing catch up was ETHML also recently launched your native utility token EMT,

[00:10:24] which plays a key role in ETHML's advertising platform.

[00:10:27] But again, for people listening, hearing about both of these things for the very first time,

[00:10:32] can you just expand on that and maybe explain the link between the two there?

[00:10:37] Yes.

[00:10:38] So EMT, as you mentioned, just launched June 12th on the MCC.

[00:10:42] And so we're really happy about that because it allows us to fulfill our promise and our vision

[00:10:46] to the users that have been with us.

[00:10:48] And it shows that we were really serious about this consensual marketing.

[00:10:51] Basically, this is when mentioning that we have to somehow reward users for their time.

[00:10:58] EMT allows us to do this.

[00:11:00] And the vehicle in which and the mechanism in which it is done is that advertisers,

[00:11:06] in order to send this consensual marketing that users have opted into,

[00:11:09] to receive one a day, for example, when you know a day, for example,

[00:11:13] then what can happen is then the company that wants to do so advertisement makes ensure that they have

[00:11:20] some of these EMT in order to send it through to the user, the email,

[00:11:26] and the email will be accompanied by set token or the amounts that are established by the market

[00:11:31] to other people that are sending their set tokens.

[00:11:34] And so this helps us fulfill that vision of consensual marketing,

[00:11:39] and it's how it's done through our advertising platform.

[00:11:42] So our advertisement platform essentially just allows companies to send relevant content,

[00:11:47] marketing-wise, to an open audience that is interested in receiving a ton of content

[00:11:53] in exchange for some of these.

[00:11:57] And another thing that really stood out was Ethermail's email as a wallet solution,

[00:12:02] which also enables users to create a non-custodial wallet through Gmail

[00:12:07] or their existing Apple account in just under one minute.

[00:12:11] Again, sounds incredibly forward-thinking.

[00:12:13] How integral is this in your mission to maybe bridging the gap between the Web 2 and Web 3 worlds?

[00:12:19] So we really want Web 2 users to feel at home as we start off the discussion,

[00:12:24] and email really feels at home right now.

[00:12:28] It simply is complicated to create a wallet whether you have to install some extent

[00:12:35] or you have to install a third-party application.

[00:12:38] And so the mechanism in which you can also lose these private keys,

[00:12:42] which then does a recovery because a wallet kind of works like an identity,

[00:12:44] and also, for lack of a better word, a bank account or a pay-to-bank based on the tokens,

[00:12:51] all of this, right?

[00:12:52] And so because it has this dual nature of identity and asset management,

[00:12:59] the fundamental problem is that it's scary and you can lose your seed phrase very easily and all of this.

[00:13:05] So for us to minimize that concern for Web 2 users,

[00:13:10] really we facilitate the login with something that they know that they feel like,

[00:13:15] okay, I'm never going to lose my Google account because it's my phone,

[00:13:20] it's linked up to my secondary backup account, whatever mechanism they've chosen, right?

[00:13:25] And they're like, I'm never going to lose access to that.

[00:13:27] So they can log into Ethermail through a seamless experience,

[00:13:31] which then creates the wallet for them,

[00:13:33] and then they don't have to really worry about that complicated third-party extension,

[00:13:38] application, seed phrase, and it minimizes all of this.

[00:13:41] And by minimizing it, then we can increase the user adoption.

[00:13:44] And the whole goal, right, is to,

[00:13:47] it is not 100% necessarily to try and replace the Google inbox,

[00:13:52] but it's to make sure that users have a place where they feel comfortable,

[00:13:55] that they're not associating their personal information,

[00:13:58] that they're not at risk of losing their assets or things like that.

[00:14:02] And so this mechanism is very accorded up.

[00:14:07] And a question I've got to ask,

[00:14:08] based on your experience as a Web3 founder,

[00:14:11] for anybody listening that's interested in joining this world,

[00:14:15] it is a huge movement.

[00:14:16] Is there any piece of advice that you'd offer to any aspiring entrepreneur

[00:14:20] looking to maybe segue into the Web3 space?

[00:14:23] I would imagine there's more and more people thinking about doing this.

[00:14:26] A lot of people make mistakes.

[00:14:28] Is there any advice you would offer around that anyone wanted to follow in your footsteps?

[00:14:33] It's a lot of fun, that it is.

[00:14:36] But besides being fun, it is very challenging.

[00:14:39] What seems simple and trivial in, let's say,

[00:14:42] the Web2 world in Web3 has added complexity because of the anonymous nature,

[00:14:48] the encryption.

[00:14:49] But as time does go on, things will be simplified.

[00:14:51] And that's the goal.

[00:14:53] Additionally, I think that community management is super important,

[00:14:57] but it is not to be underestimated.

[00:14:59] And finally, that if you are getting involved in, let's say, community building

[00:15:05] and early growth is that the community members definitely encourage you,

[00:15:12] but there are and they can boost you and they can do all these positive things.

[00:15:16] But there can be some malicious actors that can,

[00:15:19] if you're not prepared, single-handedly drive your business in the incorrect direction

[00:15:26] by doing certain sophisticated types of attacks.

[00:15:30] And this can be very time-consuming, difficult.

[00:15:33] So the good comes with the bad, but these are all problems to be solved.

[00:15:36] And it's, yeah, it's great.

[00:15:40] I love it.

[00:15:41] And you did say the Web3 space is a lot of fun.

[00:15:44] So building on that, I always ask my guests to leave everyone listening

[00:15:48] with a song we can add to our Spotify playlist that you'd recommend.

[00:15:52] Guilty pleasures are allowed.

[00:15:53] We've got all kinds of crazy things on there or a book that you'd recommend

[00:15:57] that we can add to our Amazon wishlist.

[00:15:59] All I'm going to ask is what would you like to leave everyone listening with and why?

[00:16:02] Okay, so I think I'm going to pick a song.

[00:16:04] It's one that I've been listening to quite a bit lately,

[00:16:06] which is Life is Beautiful by Tim McMorris.

[00:16:11] It's also a fun one.

[00:16:13] So I think it fits very well with what we just actually concluded with.

[00:16:18] It's a fun one.

[00:16:19] Oh, I've not heard that.

[00:16:20] I'm going to be adding that straight to our Spotify playlist.

[00:16:24] I'll be checking that out in a moment as well.

[00:16:26] But anyone listening just want to find out a little bit more information about Ethermail,

[00:16:30] maybe join your community or just learn a little bit more about it and how they can get involved.

[00:16:35] Where would you like to point everyone?

[00:16:36] So anyone can find us on our X or on our Telegram.

[00:16:41] We have pretty active communication mechanisms there.

[00:16:44] But we do believe that the best is signing up to Ethermail directly and by proxy then becoming part of our newsletter.

[00:16:51] Well, it's been a pleasure to have you on the podcast today.

[00:16:55] As I said, we spoke to your founder a few years ago and had a great conversation.

[00:16:59] One of the things I've always loved about what you're doing is this mission to bridge the gap between Web 2 and Web 3,

[00:17:06] increase adoption in the space.

[00:17:07] Love what you're doing.

[00:17:08] Love to get you back on next year, see how things are evolving.

[00:17:11] But more than anything, just thanks for keeping me up to speed with what you're doing.

[00:17:14] Thanks again.

[00:17:16] Thank you very much, Neil.

[00:17:16] So as we've heard from Shant today, Ethermail's work goes beyond just building a decentralized email solution.

[00:17:24] It's about creating a foundation for communication in Web 3 space.

[00:17:28] And their approach to anonymous messaging, consensual marketing and bridging Web 2 and Web 3

[00:17:34] has the potential to accelerate the adoption of blockchain technologies in a very real way.

[00:17:41] Whether it be simplifying user experiences or rewarding people for their time,

[00:17:46] Ethermail seems to be introducing new dynamics into a well-established communication system.

[00:17:54] So the question remains, as blockchain continues to grow, how will traditional services evolve?

[00:18:02] And what role will platforms like Ethermail play in redefining these spaces?

[00:18:08] Whether you're intrigued by decentralized communication or simply excited about the future of Web 3,

[00:18:15] I would advise that you check out Ethermailers because they're continuously innovating.

[00:18:19] It's certainly a journey that I've been following very closely and will continue to.

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[00:20:37] So today was Web 3 and email.

[00:20:40] What are we going to talk about tomorrow?

[00:20:41] Well, I'm not going to reveal any spoilers.

[00:20:44] Tune in, same time, same place tomorrow.

[00:20:46] I've got another guest lined up.

[00:20:48] But hopefully you will all join me again then.

[00:20:51] Well, bye for now.