The Growth Dilemma of Web3 and Dmail's Breakthrough Path

Source: Dmail

Numerous capital and institutions have launched their own products targeting Web3, among which the Web3 email Dmail has innovatively introduced built-in asset functionality and platform attributes, promising to become a leading phenomenon in Web3 applications.

In 2014, when Dr. Gavin Wood, the founder of Polkadot, was still a co-founder of Ethereum, he proposed the concept of Web3. As Web3 became the focus of discussion in 2022, one cannot help but give more respect to Dr. Gavin Wood.

Of course, the fact that Web3 has become a topic of conversation for more and more people does not necessarily prove that it is a path of truth. To this day, we still face a series of questions: Does Web3 have a future? What problems can Web3 solve? What kind of applications can become the breakthrough for Web3?

Is Web3 promising?

According to a research report by KeyChain Ventures and Cointelegraph Research, $14.6 billion was invested in the blockchain industry in Q1 of 2022. Among the segmented tracks, the Web3 field received the most attention, with 26.5% of the share concentrated here.

From this data, it is not difficult to conclude that Web3 has great development prospects in the eyes of these capital investors. In this list of institutional capital, you can see well-known large capital institutions such as A16z, Three Arrows Capital, Sequoia Capital, Goldman Sachs, and Tiger Global, and even internet giants like Microsoft have begun to enter the field.

With the support of external capital, the investment ecosystem within Web3 is gradually being built and improved, highlighting the recognition of community-based capital for the Web3 ecosystem.

Syndicate is a DApp providing basic financing services for Web3, which has already attracted the attention of star investment institutions including A16z and Protocol Labs. On May 18, Syndicate announced on Twitter that over 2,400 investment clubs had been established on the application in less than four months, indicating that even in a weak market, more people are still paying attention to Web3 investment projects.

What problems can Web3 solve?

In Dr. Gavin Wood's view, the model of Web 2 is very similar to the social model before the emergence of the internet, and the reason for the emergence of Web3 is that Web2 can no longer meet the demands of a rapidly developing era. From the read-only network of Web1 to the read-write network of Web2, and then to the decentralized internet of Web3, the evolution of the internet reflects the direction of social structure evolution.

Although we cannot yet observe whether social organizations will develop towards Web3, Web3 itself is a collection of internet concepts under all our current ideal models. What problems can it solve? At present, it seems more like addressing the issues of development imbalance, opacity, and insecurity present in Web2.

A report from Goldman Sachs reveals the rich connotations derived from Web3: decentralized networks, privacy needs, creator economy… all of these clarify the property rights, boundaries, and protections within the internet. As the internet has evolved from 1.0 and 2.0 to the current 3.0 concept, content creation has become increasingly rich, data has become more complex, and people's demands for the protection of the content they create on the internet and their privacy requirements have also increased. The combination of blockchain technology and the internet adds a layer of financial attributes while protecting personal data, helping the creator economy thrive in the Web3 environment.

Why can Dmail become a breakthrough for Web3?

The influx of funds and the integration of blockchain technology with the internet are promoting the development of the Web3 industry, and we are seeing more and more projects referred to as Web3. For example, payment tools like MetaMask and content tools like Mirror in the Web3 era. However, as the question of this section suggests, so far, the applications of Web3 are still limited to a small number of people. Web3 is still a long way from being widely known and applied by the majority. So what kind of DApp can become the breakthrough for Web3's growth? This needs to start from the various issues currently facing Web3.

Overall, the problems of Web3 in applications can be summarized into three aspects: high entry barriers, security issues, and usage costs.

1. High entry barriers

The Web3 DApps we typically refer to are a combination of blockchain technology and internet applications. From creating wallets, linking wallets, using wallets to operating DApp applications, there are significant differences from current Web2 applications. This requires a long time for user habit cultivation and user education. Additionally, many applications focus solely on product functionality implementation without considering the operational experience for new users, resulting in poor user experience and users being unable to quickly get started.

2. Security and privacy issues

Although Web3 emphasizes privacy protection and security performance, the overall security issues in the blockchain industry are not less than those in traditional internet. In terms of technical issues, the blockchain field is still a key target for hackers. According to a statistic from the internet, the amount lost in the crypto field due to hacking attacks in just March-April of this year has approached $1 billion. Moreover, cases where project funds are locked due to contract code vulnerabilities and subsequently attacked are also common in the industry.

3. Usage costs

In addition to high entry barriers, the biggest problem facing the popularization of Web3 is the gas fee cost. Due to the mechanism of blockchain, any recording and broadcasting to the entire network requires the work of miners, and gas fees have become an unavoidable cost for Web3 users. This is a significant concern for many new users. High gas costs on platforms like Ethereum have become a new obstacle for users entering the market.

Even with these issues, there is not an insurmountable gap between Web2 and Web3. Through the analysis of these problems, we can see a clue that connects Web2 to Web3: frequent application scenarios, allowing users to quickly understand and get started, without high costs, while perfectly solving privacy issues. In my opinion, the most likely track that can break through in this developmental clue for Web3 may be email.

Email is the most basic component of the internet. Each of us relies on it in our daily lives and work, whether for office communication or daily logins; email is the most fundamental tool. This inherently creates frequent daily application scenarios for email and the characteristic that users can quickly understand and use it. As for the cost and privacy issues, they need to be analyzed on a case-by-case basis.

Looking at the current development of the decentralized email market, two alternative products have emerged: Dmail and Skiff.

Among these two products, Dmail can be said to be the first application in the industry that focuses on Web3 email, deployed on the Dfinity chain. According to information from its official social media, the testnet is expected to go live by the end of May, and its social media following has exceeded 20k; while Skiff, which is also deployed on the Ethereum chain, still has some distance to cover in community building compared to Dmail.

In terms of specific product functionality, Dmail focuses on Web3 email, while Skiff focuses on a work platform, with differences in email details. Dmail has clearly defined in its demo version that the email has asset functionality, meaning that encrypted assets can be sent along with emails, and it also has the capability to receive airdrop emails. Observations from players on the beta versions of the other two email applications indicate that Skiff has not yet involved asset functionality.

In terms of platform scalability, Dmail, due to its built-in asset management functionality, is more likely to possess the attributes of a traffic platform compared to the other two email applications. Moreover, since email has the attribute of internet identity from the Web2 era, after entering the Web3 era, email applications with platform attributes often also generate DID (Decentralized Identifier) auxiliary functions. This is actually one of the most important factors that make Dmail superior to the other two email applications.

From a cost perspective, although both products claim to have 0 gas fees, the underlying content is different. Dmail is a DApp based on the Dfinity chain, which features a reverse gas fee model, meaning that the gas fees incurred by users on the chain must be borne by the project party, truly achieving 0 gas fees for users. In contrast, the other two products are on the Ethereum chain, currently only implementing the most basic functionalities, and as the email functionalities become richer in the future, whether they can continue to maintain 0 gas fees is worth considering for users.

Overall, while Skiff has completed the launch of its beta version, it has essentially only combined wallet and email functionalities. Although it allows wallet login and email on-chain functionality, it is still a distance away from being a Web3-level application. Dmail, while slightly lagging in development progress, according to information disclosed by its official platform, its beta version should be launched soon.

From the progress reports over the past few months, after the launch of this beta version, Dmail will at least support communication with both Web3 and traditional email, complete basic email functionalities, and basic asset management functionalities. From this perspective, Dmail may become the first truly Web3-level email application on the market, opening up the traffic entrance for the entire industry to transition from Web2 to Web3.

Of course, data and analysis can only serve as references; each product will have different development cycles and issues at different stages. However, whether it is Dmail or Skiff, they both represent a possibility of migration from Web2 to Web3. Users from the Web2 era can fully leverage basic internet tools like email to enter the Web3 world with the help of blockchain technology. Applications that can drive users to complete this era migration will undoubtedly become the greatest applications of the next internet era.

What functionalities are available on the Dmail testnet?

The following are the functionalities of the test version publicly announced by the official. This version still focuses on basic email functionalities, with specific details as follows:

• Dmail will be able to communicate and interact with any Web3 or Web2 email. Regardless of the service provider, you can send and receive emails through Dmail;
• Supports Plug wallet and network identity login;
• The settings will display the NFT accounts you own in Dmail, allowing you to choose any of them to bind with a PID as your email account;
• Supports temporarily saving unsent drafts;
• Allows viewing sent emails in the sent box, and editing even after sending;
• Automatic saving of recently used contacts and addresses;
• More comprehensive security features, such as dual verification of account and identity when interacting with Dmail for the first time;
• Basic capacity of 200MB storage space (including a daily sending limit of 20 emails, supporting text, image, audio, and video attachments);
• The current testnet version supports downloading attachments up to 3MB;
• Allows outgoing email attachments with a maximum file size of 3MB;
• Dmail will also upgrade the overall user interface and functionalities, enabling you to perform batch operations, mark important conversations, mark spam, etc.

Conclusion

Recently, a quote from an article titled "Web3: 2Be or not 2B" published in Forbes perfectly encapsulated the attitude of Web3 pioneers.

"We expect to solve all the problems of the world with what is essentially an experiment, in which a small group of people take a risk, while the world watches on the sidelines. …We have one foot in the Pioneers' club, and one in the Early Adopters' club…"

Great progress is always slow and sudden. The slow aspect refers to how changes accumulate power in subtle ways; the sudden aspect refers to the leap from quantitative change to qualitative change. Just as it was difficult for people to predict the significant development of the crypto industry two years ago, the progress of Web3 is steadily advancing.

It is an honor that users who have already participated in Web3 are becoming pioneers of an era.