Trust In Mail

Idea: Decentralizing Trust in Emails, Codename TrustInMail

Technical Proposal: Scalable Email Anti-Spam System

This proposal outlines a scalable solution to combat email spam using a trust-based, crowd-sourced model combined with optional monetary incentives for message prioritization. The system incorporates three key elements:

1. Direct Trust: Anyone you trust directly should be able to send email to you. Spam filter should not block them.
2. Extended Trust: Everyone who you don’t know, but your friend trust, you can decide if you can trust them by calculate your propagated trust level via a PageRank-style calculation.
3. Group Trust: You can not only trust individual, but also trust a group of senders by their domain name.
4. Warm Connection: A sender can also ask friend of intended receiver to forward / vouch the email for them so their email could pass the sender’s filter for once. If forwarder misuse the trust, they will be panelize by reducing trust level
5. Here’s the money, trust me once (aka “Pay to email me”): Non-trusted senders can send email with digital money (.e.g bitcoin/Ethereum TX) attached to it. Receiver can decide whether to read them based on money value and add them to trusted list once they finish reading.
6. One-time pre-approval: Receiver can distribute their one-time pre-approval in cryptographic signature approach to the medium/social network when Receiver ask for something and allow people to send them email with respect to that matters.

Upon receiving an email, the recipient flags the sender as:

• Trusted for a Limited Time
• Trusted Permanently
• Mark as Spammer

This way, you can ensure reputation / trust based spam-filtering. Everyone is incentivized to do the right thing.

Marketing people can focus on sending email with high quality, removing platforms as intermediaries.

TrustMail: A Market-Driven Approach to Email Spam Prevention

Executive Summary

We propose TrustMail, a revolutionary email filtering system that combines social trust mechanisms with economic incentives to effectively combat spam while ensuring important messages reach their recipients.

The Problem

Traditional spam filters often fail to distinguish between legitimate business communications and unwanted spam, resulting in missed opportunities and communication breakdowns. Current solutions lack the nuance to handle the complex nature of modern professional communications.

Our Solution

TrustMail implements a three-tiered approach to email filtering:

1. Trust-Based Allowlisting
   • Automatic passage for pre-approved senders and domains
   • Crowdsourced trust verification system
   • Dynamic trust scoring based on recipient feedback
2. Priority Access Model
   • Pay-to-reach option for urgent or important communications
   • Market-driven pricing based on recipient preferences
   • Revenue sharing with recipients to incentivize adoption
3. Trust Network Forwarding
   • Trusted intermediaries can vouch for new senders
   • Built-in viral growth mechanism
   • Reduces false positives while maintaining security

Market Opportunity

• Email remains the primary business communication channel
• Global email security market size: $3.4 billion (2023)
• Growing concern over spam and phishing attacks
• Increasing demand for reliable B2B communication channels

Business Model

• SaaS subscription for organizations
• Transaction fees on priority access payments
• Enterprise solutions with custom integration
• API access for email client integration

Competitive Advantage

• First solution to combine social trust with economic incentives
• Self-regulating ecosystem
• Scalable, crowd-sourced trust verification
• Zero training required for end users

Call to Action

We’re seeking initial partners to pilot this solution and strategic investors to fund development. Join us in revolutionizing email communication security.