Andrew Milich explains why decentralized email works with blockchain at Skiff

0:00I'm Ashton Addison from blockwest capital for investment pitch media and today on the Crypto Coin Show we have Andrew millik CEO and co-founder of skiff talking about decentralized email I feel like this has been a great use case that I haven't seen come to fruition yet and I feel like it's really needed in this day and time I'm interested to hear on the approach

0:20you're taking on how we can actually make email one of the first use cases of the internet into the blockchain and improve it in all the different ways that blockchain is improving the world so thank you so much Andrew for taking the time to come on the show my pleasure Ashton thanks so much for having me you're very welcome let's dive straight into it I'd love to start off with just

0:38an overview of skiff and how you guys are exactly revolutionizing email and making it more decentralized and then we'll dive into all the details yeah so I think you put it really well and that email was one of the first use cases of the Internet it's literally 50 or 60 years old at this point and it's the original way people communicated around the world using the internet it's also

0:58one of the first decentralized protocols where you know basically anyone who has a computer can set up an email account an email server and start receiving mail at that address so it's pretty amazing to actually think back to how people were imagining kind of this decentralized world back in the day and then how that's actually changed in the last kind of 10 20 30 40 years to become

1:17more and more centralized and so when I see email and us doing at skip is almost returning email to many of its you know really successful routes where a lot of that protocol is decentralized where it's built to be private and user owned from the ground up and now also work and integrate into a world where tens of millions of people use crypto wallets in

1:35their browsers on their phones on their apps every single day and so a lot of that gives us whole new areas for privacy for security for kind of you know email kind of true decentralization and also integrating all this great stuff that's come about with wallets and naming service and more great intro Andrew and you're right about the sort of the initiation of

1:57email and the internet I felt like it was more decentralized back then when you had to use a client and using email protocols and I feel like Webmail in some sort has sort of been the downfall of the Privacy now once you add in browsers and you add in third parties like oh just go on the website to check your email and that's where you know the

2:15vulnerabilities and the third parties are taking your information and so taking advantage of that and capitalizing on it and making you the product is that what you've sort of seen and grow yeah definitely I think that's one of the clearest and simplest examples you know today billions of people For Better or Worse are using Webmail products Gmail Outlook Yahoo Hotmail go down the list

2:37and they're all really big at this point tens or hundreds of millions of people using them probably every day but like you said you're really you know in the web two sense kind of renting your identity from them where they're storing your emails your files your messages your attachments your contacts go down the list and I think you know that really is different from a

2:55lot of the origin of email and I think what it could be today too where you know it's not particularly convenient but 60 years ago you could set up a server in your garage and then say I'm receiving email on the server and you know no one can shut it down and so you had full control over your privacy over your protocol your identity your email and so at skiff a lot of what we think

3:14about is how can we let people use an identity that they truly own like a crypto wallet or ethereum naming service or Solana naming service and kind of integrate that into a really easy to use communication method and so email is basically standardized it's built into every device that we use it's built to Notifications Etc so we're kind of trying to take a lot of those original

3:33Concepts that were built into email privacy and identity and then you know bring it into a really easy to use product that's great and I like that analogy made of you know having your own email server which nobody does anymore because it takes too much time but sort of being able to bypass any of those centralized servers and now when I think about you know

3:52servers I think okay well if the blockchain is sort of like a decentralized world machine maybe we can just take those servers that we had in our garage and replace them with the blockchain and hopefully still have you know that privacy and security is that a good analogy on what skiff is doing yeah I think it generally is and I'm also curious what you would say the most

4:14important parts of using enlar for you I think a large part of it is what we do so identity for skiff you can use crypto wallet like metamask or Brave wallet or coinbase wallet or others to sign in and set up your account so you still own that private key and you own that identity we never get access to that you're just kind of proving you have access to it so you can receive

4:33mail at it then we also integrate with ipfs so the interplanetary file system so I'm sure you've you know come across probably the whole ecosystem of decentralized storage and your viewers might engage with that but you know ipfs and filecoin store J our weave go down the list and they all have their own tokenomics and token systems so what we've done is we actually let you enable

4:54ipfs storage in your account and so we'll take data we'll encrypt it with a private key that only you own and then you can also store that in a decentralized manner where because it's encrypted and only you can access it you can actually have some flexibility on putting it on a decentralized network and then it becomes more censorship assistant it becomes accessible all the

5:12time Etc so I think you're right a lot of those concepts are you know what we try and integrate into skiff a lot of that decentralized storage and identity but then a lot of what we spend time on too is just making a good email product so good mobile apps good web apps really easy to use and log in and so everyone has their own email workflows and we

5:30For better or spend a lot of time on that I think that's super important because the you know the user interface and making it easy to use is going to be one of the things one of the reasons that most people use the webmails is just because it's so convenient right there's that trade-off of like well it's convenient and you know there's these downfalls of my the privacy of my

5:53information but like I'd rather just click on the URL and open it up really easy rather than have a server at my house and you know I feel like that's for The Cypher punks and then and the Privacy nerds that are so focused on it they're trying to take the extra steps but how do we take all of that advantages of decentralization and privacy and turn it into a user

6:12interface that's as easy as Webmail in the decentralized way yeah yeah I totally agree I mean I think there I hate to say it running a server is probably not the best thing for most people to do on the internet you know it's painful it's annoying it's expensive and you honestly might end up having you know your own security and privacy problems if you don't configure

6:31it right and you know most people in the world just should not be spending time on that be super inefficient so I think what we try and do is leverage I think your analogy of saying that blockchain is kind of this massive distributed computer and leverage some of the infrastructure that's built on that ipff storage is a great example where you don't have to run your own storage you

6:49know servers and storage but you can participate in a network that's distributed that's censorship resistant where there is kind of no one Authority controlling how it works it's just this protocol and then also your data can be encrypted and live on there and you still have pretty good you have good assurances that it'll be there forever so I think that's probably one of the

7:07clearest examples of how you might think of what web3 email is or how you know a blockchain based email system would work and then also how we apply that at skiff that's great and if I was you know a tech user that was intermediate not not a crazy psychopunk and not just Grandma checking her Gmail but I'm you know I'm I'm in Tech and I'm sort of want to get into a blockchain email

7:30how easy is it to sort of make it your own like do you have to use at skiff.com or you can use your own domain name and sort of connect that in great question so we want to make it as easy or easier and better to use than any traditional Webmail that you're using today so Gmail or an Outlook so right now what you can do is you can sign up at skip.com you'll get an

7:51appsgift.com email address what we're actually doing soon is configuring custom domains as well and so that is just a small change on like email routing and email servers and we'll give you know DNS records to add to your domain but you'll be able to get that same experience with your own domain and I think that's another awesome example of kind of owning your identity on the

8:08web where it's great to kind of own your own email domain and then regardless of whatever email you're putting behind that you still own that domain and you know really no one can take that from you so yeah that's all coming soon that's great and I know a lot of email users you know instead of Webmail they prefer some kind of client where they can input their emails into that

8:28whether it's Thunderbird or you know Outlook has a client as well but there are some other more privacy Centric clients is that something that works with blockchain email as well where you can sort of take the email into your own application good question so it doesn't actually work out of the box a lot of that is due to the encryption of the emails where

8:46basically you know inside the skip client every email is antenna encrypted so even skiff no one has access to them except you and your browser from there connecting it to another email app like a built-in you know native email app on whatever operating system you use requires some functionality that we're still building but it's not just straightforward out of

9:05the box because of that level of encryption and privacy but I'm curious I don't know do you prefer to use you know phone email apps native email apps what's kind of the email workflow that you think most people are gravitating towards today yeah I would I would say you know a lot of these Tech users are sort of using clients where you know maybe that they have they have a Gmail

9:23but they also have their work emails and then they have a bunch of other emails trying to fit it into one space instead of having to go to each website yeah and then how do you add a blockchain email into that as well and you know sort of start migrating over to there eventually you know it's not usually not the flip of a dime yeah I think you know email's definitely

9:42one of the toughest things to switch in your life everyone knows your email address you have years of attachments and messages and work history and employment history and personal history so that's definitely difficult I think like you said owning your own domain can make that a bit better you don't have to tell people to change an email address and also we do try and

9:59make switching really easy where you can click a couple buttons and import your mail from another inbox so from files or from Outlook or from Gmail and it'll become you know basically be encrypted in your new skip inbox for you so you'll still have access to that and then we'll also soon allow you to either set up a custom domain or purchase a

10:17domain through skiff so we want to make you know it very simple to customize and have a great experience then also to integrate in the other skip products so collaboration and notes and file storage but totally agree like you said most people have multiple email accounts these days switching emails tough and the products need to be really good for anyone to use them definitely well I'm

10:37looking forward to seeing the growth of blockchain email it's been on my radar for a few years and it seems like you know there's been attempts but there really hasn't been a sort of a blockchain mainstream application that's that's come out you know why do you think it's taken so long for email to be one of those good use cases for blockchain

10:56yeah I love talking about this I also I'm curious if you have thoughts on that too because I think communication and messaging is a really natural thing to be to spawn out of you know wallets and blockchains and all the web 3 Innovation that's happening I think one thing that's exciting is now it seems like people are really focused on giving a lot of utility to wallets

11:15and to you know all the apps that are built out of them and the browsers that have extend you know wallet extensions and all the different exchanges and platforms people are using to engage with the blockchain so one reason for that is I think some of the kind of token Market markets have slightly settled down since last summer when people were a lot more focused on

11:34launching tokens and speculation and staking and you know a lot of the D5 applications that are insanely cool and mathematical but are a little more stable right now and so now it's kind of the seconds I don't know second wave I like to think where I think we're seeing so many more people think about the products you can actually build and then actually

11:51realizing that you know once kind of some of the staking incentives or economic or tokenomic incentives go away having products that are really good are some of the only reasons why people might stick to you know using their wallet every day and so I'm super excited about that because we get to work with some awesome wallet Partners decentralized storage partners and more

12:10are and they're so motivated about we have this thing that tens of millions of people use they put their valuables in it you know like money and tokens and now how can we actually give them value out of that every day that's great and I'm excited to see how it grows out and that sort of leads me to think maybe there is room for some kind of cryptocurrency token where

12:33there's a governance token or an nft play is that something that skiff has in mind as you grow as well yeah I think not currently it's not currently on the radar you know we're focused on building just really good applications and products that are really private and integrate well what I think is a cool model for that though is the ethereum naming service where they've run such an

12:55important protocol that you know millions of people now use and it just integrates so deeply with different products and apps and also they're run by a decentralized foundation and so they have a great governance model and so that's been really impressive to see kind of a real product that a lot of people engage with you know spend money on and are proud of

13:13That's also run by such an Engaged kind of community governance forward foundation and really token so we're definitely thinking about what models are super successful that's one that inspires us and the team a lot but no plans to do kind of a token drop or you know an nft program quite yet okay good to know and you know you talk a lot a lot about the

13:33advantages of privacy and not having your information read by by Google and these large companies I feel like that's a great Advantage but they're all are also some you know sort of centralized solutions that are privacy focused we're seeing things like proton male and you know people are sort of switching over to those because it's supposed to be a little

13:53bit more private although it's not decentralized for your information let's just say that you were using skiff you weren't using attachments or a decentralized storage but you're just doing text emails what would be the difference in using a privacy focused solution like like protonmail and then using skip for basic emails yeah I'd say functionally it's somewhat

14:16similar like we want to be a really good email product we have mobile apps you know and so do a bunch of more privacy focused email products I think what's exciting is we're now seeing tens and hundreds of millions of people make that choice to use a privacy focused messenger you know a signal or a telegram or a session you know privacy focused web browser like a Firefox or a

14:34brave you know privacy focused crypto kind of go down the list on the email side I think you know you ask a really good question for most users our level of privacy is similar to some other ones that are out there so n10 encryption but we also have a few special things that I think you know partly leverage the decentralized nature and are also just product choices we made so for

14:53example it requires absolutely no personal information to sign up for a skip account you can open an incognito window in your browser sign up in under five seconds and you'll have an inbox you'll have a collaborative workspace you'll have a file storage spot also the product ecosystem that we offer is different and a little more expansive so for example you could use skiff to

15:13write notes you could use it to collaborate in real time like Google Docs or you could use it to write wikis or share job boards and you know share messages you can upload files and share folders and just work together as a team really well so I think the major differences are just that product ecosystem where we've integrated a lot of the team collaboration and real-time

15:31collaboration so more structure for teams and businesses so you can sign up with five or ten people and you know all work together on a shared folder or a shared workspace and then finally that stuff around you know integrating a wallet integrating all these web3 features with that same level of privacy okay that's great to know Andrew and you know one of the reasons that Gmail is so

15:52popular because it's free you know because it's free they're finding other ways to make money off of it you know whether it's selling your personal information but some of these privacy Centric ones like like proton that you actually have to pay per month for this yeah and like that's sort of the exchange of you know we're not going to sell your information but we need

16:09money to stay alive so how does that work with skiff you know is there a is there a pay to play or I'm guessing that you guys aren't taking people's information and generating Revenue off of it how does that work to stay alive yeah well we have no personal information you know like I said you can sign up literally with you know match keys on your browser and you could

16:27create an email account or choose you know generate a random metamask wallet you can sign up so there is a skip Pro and Skip business subscription so you can sign up and get extra storage space extra email aliases and then some other features like unlimited version history with your accounts but some of the things we've also invested really early on is making

16:43that experience for teams and for businesses really great you know email for work is probably one of the biggest things all of us do every day whether it's you know our own small business small you know we do freelance work and email a bunch of people or when a big corporation that Provisions our email accounts and all the other Integrations on top of that so we've tried to make

17:01that really kind of simple and built into the product where you can self-serve sign up for your whole team and organization but like you mentioned right now skiff is just a more standard pay per month but you can also pay with crypto which is pretty cool awesome and where do you see the Turning Point moving forward whether it's in one year two years or three years where you

17:22know this Tipping Point of people are fed up with everyone using Gmail and you know whether something happens to Google or people's privacy just continues to get leaked as it has been through most of these social media accounts where we will see you know a drastic rise in people starting to use privacy Centric Solutions like this yeah I think it's happening I think

17:42it's happening in a really noticeable way like hundreds of millions of people using Brave and like you mentioned proton and signal and telegram you know telegram's one of the most widely used products in the world signal has 100 million people or more use it every month so I think we're getting to that kind of major phase of adoption where people understand these products and why

18:00anyone they know might use them not just that random kind of privacy focused friend that they have I do think we're gonna also have more constant crises with privacy where basically our personal information is so I hate to say it strewn around big tech companies where they basically built up such kind of identifiable profiles of the things we search for the people we

18:21talk to the messages we send and what we do every day whether it's you know a map product or a messaging product or an email product and so I think we'll just I hate to say it see a few more of those crises like we had in you know WhatsApp in I think 2020 and you know Google in previous years and Cambridge analytica and going back I think we'll just have

18:39unfortunately some more of those global realization moments that make people think more of a privacy focused Solution One Last point on that is I think we also have better privacy focused products than we ever have before so you know signal I think is as easy to use as iMessage and you know Brave is as easy to use or Firefox is as easy to use as Chrome and so I think that wasn't

19:00necessarily the case five years ago and so now I think we're finding that group of people who really just want to use products and get value out of them but also really care about the usability and having good privacy focused alternatives great Point Andrew and I think it is that time for email to be included in that group of you know it's just as easy

19:18to use so it's going to have hundreds of millions of users and the people that are proactive on that are hopefully going to preserve their personal information even more I'm trying to remove it from those old platforms and not have 10 years of history of chats and everything that you've said all ready for the taking from some hackers or vulnerabilities whether in the

19:38country or out you know so I'm really looking forward to seeing how this can how this grows out and I would love to you know sort of get a call to action on what is the best way for people to get started with the blockchain email and get proactive to get moving over to skip absolutely so it's super easy you can try out our product on skiff.com so

20:00skiff.com we also have a really active Twitter Discord you know in communities all over the web and so all you know I'll write back to you in five or ten minutes most of the time if you have product ideas or suggestions tweet at us with ideas DM us on Twitter and we'll just get back to you with any problems you have any questions or just understanding how you know more private

20:18decentralized email products can help you amazing Andrew thank you so much for taking the time all the best with skiff I will leave those links in the description box below as well and let's follow up in the near future my pleasure huge fan of your show thank you