BlockMail | Devpost

Inspiration

The need for a secure, usable, and trustworthy email service. The recent explosion in blockchain has mostly focused on financial applications, but there is still a lack of a proper email service that employs the benefits of this technology. The current day protocol used in email services, SMTP, made in 1982, doesn't involve any authentication or encryption, which allows attacks such as spoofing and phishing to be carried out easily. Therefore, we were inspired by AdNovum's challenge to apply this technology to improve email.

What it does

Adds a browser extension for Gmail that allows the user to apply blockchain technology to their mail service, improving their security. Furthermore, since it is an extension, it can be used by any user without much difficulty.

How I built it

Through a proof of work protocol, a distributed ledger of emails is constructed and downloaded by all nodes in the system. When sending an email, the user can send it to the blockchain node on their device, which encrypts and signs the email, then broadcasts it to all of the connected nodes. The destination email address decrypts all emails addressed to it and reads in Gmail. We designed and created an original blockchain using Python, whilst developed the browser extension using JavaScript.

Challenges I ran into

Finding resources on building a blockchain from scratch and figuring out how to get the extension to gather data directly from Gmail. ALL WITHOUT APIs.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

Created and implemented a blockchain from scratch in less than 24hrs. Learned how to write in JavaScript, HTML, and CSS without prior knowledge.

What I learned

How to make and implement a blockchain from scratch. JavaScript from scratch.

What's next for BlockMail

Currently it's a proof of concept, it needs some scaling to adapt to an internet wide P2P network. Furthermore, need to develop a more efficient consensus mechanism and test the performance of running the node completely from the browser for easier usability. Lastly, we hope to boost the spread of this, or similar, technologies.