Pretty Good Crypto: Ethereum encrypted e-mail

Pretty Good Crypto brings enterprise-level e-mail encryption and anti-phishing to the average consumer using Ethereum keys.

AI Generated Ethereum encrypted e-mail (Craiyon)

Privacy is normal. Except for e-mail

Privacy is normal and everywhere in 2022. Signal, FaceTime and iMessage are end-to-end encrypted, https encrypts website traffic and Zcash encrypts crypto transactions.

E-mail however, is still sent unencrypted in 2022. E-mail is stored unencrypted on your device. E-mail is stored unencrypted on mail servers.

Enterprise-level e-mail encryption for everyone

End-to-end encrypted e-mail does exist. Enterprises use encrypted e-mail (Pretty Good Privacy, PGP) but hardly anyone else uses it. Why? Because PGP is extremely hard to use if you’re a consumer or small business. Just read “I’m throwing in the towel on PGP, and I work in security, if you need to securely contact me, DM me asking for my Signal number.” Yes, it’s that bad.

We believe everyone has the right to privacy. PGP is secure but will never reach mainstream. At least not in its current incarnation. So we set out to invent a better and easier to use alternative to PGP: OpenPGC — Pretty Good Crypto.

OpenPGC is a new blockchain-agnostic standard that uses crypto keys to encrypt and sign e-mail. The signing and encrypting happens off-chain, so there are no gas fees for sending OpenPCG-encrypted e-mail.

The user is in control. The keys are self-custodial and OpenPCG encourages self-souvereign identity.

OpenPGC uses existing on-chain identity protocols to authenticate users. For instance, in the screenshot below, an e-mail is being sent to and authenticated on-chain with an ENS web3 username. Don’t like ENS? Just use any other on-chain identity protocol. Or use multiple.

OpenPGC: End-to-end encrypt e-mails using crypto keys. We built Moonfish as an OpenPGC technology demo. You can send e-mails directly to ENS web3 usernames. How awesome is that?

Strength through openness

Openness is OpenPGC’s great strength. Not only enables it users to choose the blockchain(s) or identity protocol(s) they like best, it also enables OpenPGC to improve as new, better and possibly more secure blockchains and identity protocols are invented. Something that is near-impossible with fixed siloed standards such as PGP.

OpenPGC build on proven standards where possible, such as EIP-1024 (Cross-client Encrypt/Decrypt), EIP-712 (Typed structured data hashing and signing) and RFC-4880 (OpenPGP).

Where to go next?

Want to see OpenPGC in action? Check out Sending end-to-end encrypted e-mail with Moonfish.

Want to support OpenPGC? Support our Gitcoin proposal.

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