Qtum announces its first community project “Spring Mail” and BiSMTP protocol: making every email a virtual currency wallet

Recently, the Qtum team announced its first community project: the SpringEmail project and the BiSMTP protocol.

Qtum founder Shuai Chu introduced:

Springemail hopes to greatly improve the usability of cryptocurrency and expand the user base and usage scenarios of cryptocurrency through the integration of Blockchain's protocol and the existing Internet Mail Protocol (SMTP), to realize Qtum's vision of a value transfer protocol and achieve a seamless payment experience on the Internet.

In the previous introduction, we briefly explained Qtum's design concept: In Qtum's white paper, Qtum innovatively proposed the concept of a value transfer protocol (VTP protocol: Value Transfer Protocol), which embeds smart contracts into the protocol layer and combines the existing standards of the World Wide Web to implement a blockchain payment protocol that integrates the existing TCP/IP protocol stack. This payment protocol will bring more intelligence and more business possibilities, and achieve a seamless Internet payment experience.

The current situation is that many digital currency users have reported that a full-node wallet is very difficult to use for ordinary Internet users. On the one hand, the design is still stuck in the Windows 95 style, and on the other hand, the technical features of digital currency keep many people who want to use digital currency out. However, basically all Internet users use email products, so Qtum hopes to integrate the most common Internet products with digital currencies. This is also the original intention of designing Springemail.

BiSMTP (Blockchain integrated Simple Mail Transfer Protocol), a blockchain-based simple mail transfer protocol, is a fusion protocol proposed by the Qtum team that integrates blockchain technology and existing mail protocols. Through this protocol, users can use mailboxes to send and receive small amounts of digital currency. This protocol will expand the existing SMTP protocol stack, send and receive cryptocurrencies through a markup language, and expand the functions of the mail server so that the mail server can process this markup language, thereby realizing the sending and receiving of small amounts of digital currency through emails, and can be widely used in payment scenarios on the Internet.

Shuai Chu also gave some explanations on the design details of Spring Email:

Springemail is an extensible technical architecture. In Springemail, we have designed a special role: Mail Sever Broker. The Qtum team will guide the design of the Broker's functions and provide a standard Broker function code. Each Broker can become an independent mail service provider, providing its users with the service of sending and receiving digital currencies by email. The Qtum team will only define the minimum function set of Broker, such as supporting markup languages ​​and meeting certain security standards, but each Broker can develop its own functions and obtain more users through personalization. However, for the cryptocurrency industry, all Brokers can communicate directly with each other, and the Broker's BiSMTP protocol supports sending emails to existing mail service providers such as QQmail, Gmail, and 163mail.

The design of the entire Broker should include the following details:

1.1 Redefining the mailbox

[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]

The Qtum address can be replaced with a mobile phone number, personal name, or other identifying characters.
The above different addresses are actually the same destination recipient, including @node-abt.com, @broker-abc.com @example.com
The access terminal is called an access terminal, which runs a Broker instance. The access terminal is connected to the blockchain network. Because it is a distributed network, it is actually the same no matter which terminal is used to access it.

1.2 BiSMTP access module (Broker)

Through the perfect BiSMTP protocol, each mail server can be connected to the blockchain network. The module is designed to allow traditional email clients to seamlessly send and receive cryptocurrencies through the blockchain network.

1.3 How Broker works

Select Broker based on the actual usage scenario:

• Run as a node proxy alone • Run embedded in the wallet client • Run as a mail server – can serve multiple clients Currently we choose to run it through the mail server.

1.4 Broker’s Personalized Services and Configuration

Anyone can define the service content of their own Broker and attract more users. They can develop their own unique functions on the Broker with the smallest functions. For example, they can provide email services for enterprises or new business models. Different Brokers can provide differentiated services, thus building a more personalized and distributed email service model. In order to encourage everyone to become a Broker, some rewards will be considered for Brokers in the future. In addition, in terms of security, different security standards will be set for Brokers.

Officials revealed that in order to solve the problem of ease of use and user groups of digital currency, the Qtum team will later announce a second community project: Weixia

Developers and users who are interested in the first community project can also send an email to [email protected] for more information. The Qtum Foundation will also introduce some incentives to encourage everyone's participation.