Decentralized Electronic Mail

Abstract

E-mail is one of the most popular Internet applications. Unfortunately, the server-centric architecture of today’s commercial solutions inherently limits availability, efficiency, and scalability. The single point of failure as well as the increasing processing and storage stress on the server drives the 35 year old architecture to the limits of its abilities. This paper proposes decentralized electronic mail (DEM), a novel e-mail architecture that overcomes existing systems’ shortcomings. Following the mobile-object paradigm, DEM offers a decentralized approach, which breaks the dependency between a mail user and a single service provider, while relying entirely on participants’ resources.