Inspirations and ideas

We need to remind people that the internet is so great because it is an open, global network that nobody controls. We need to remind people that email, perhaps the most widely used decentralized application, is so pervasive and so versatile simply because it is decentralized and interoperable and free… allow them to be fully in control of their data, their identities, their software, and their lives.
Spreading the Gospel of Decentralization – Ryan Shea

What it does

Lemon.email is a world’s first encrypted and decentralized e-mail service. Nobody, except user, not even our engineers – can access user’s data. Our tagline was “Your security is our top priority!”

Tech solution

One of the highlights of this project was building a Lemon Email DApp. Namely, the Dapp is a completely decentralized version of Lemon Mail, a security-focused email service. Functioning as a stand-alone version of Lemon Mail, the Dapp consist entirely of front-end Javascript code that interacts with an Ethereum contract that serves as a back-end. All message content is end-to-end encrypted and stored on IPFS, a peer-to-peer storage network. The front-end code is open source and also hosted on IPFS (although you are free to deploy and run it anywhere you want). Utilizing decentralized technologies such as Ethereum and IPFS along with public key encryption ensures both platform stability and user privacy. No one can access other users’ messages, tamper with the message content or take the service down – not even us!

Although Lemon Email Dapp uses IPFS to store encrypted content, users don’t have to bother setting up local IPFS node in order to use the Dapp. This is because the code incorporates JS IPFS library which allows for creation of temporary IPFS nodes that run within browser and can communicate with the rest of the network. Additionally, we currently run IPFS nodes on our servers in order to ensure that all data is available at all times. However, this won’t be needed once IPFS implements proper incentive system.

This DApp is a highly experimental software that aims to demonstrate that it is possible to achieve secure message exchange without trusted third-party. We encourage you to inspect the code and even deploy your own instance of the application and run it wherever you want – locally, on your own server or on IPFS.

We are looking forward to your feedback and feature suggestions that will help us improve Lemon Mail Dapp even further.

How does it all work

End-to-End Encryption

Your data is protected with asymmetric, also known as public key cryptography. The way it works is that the passphrase you use to unlock your emails is not saved anywhere / on our server and therefore even our engineers cannot read your emails. (Don’t forget your passphrase!)

Additional Privacy Layer

When emailing people that are outside of Lemon email service, we have additional security layer so that third party emai services cannot read or decrypt your emails.

Powered by Ethereum and IPFS

We use Ethereum & IPFS decentralized platforms so your emails are totaly resilient. Your emails are safe in pretty much any scenario you can imagine, from natural disaster to alien invasion.