If you are new here: Hi! I’m Jaime and I have been extremely online since ~2000. I started a blog called Design Milk in 2006, sold it in 2019, wrote about that here, and am currently working in the design-tech-art-craft intersection. I’m part strategist, part artist, and part overthinker.
What sounded like a completely crazy thought in my brain began to occupy my thoughts over the past week.
There has been so much discussion over the past few years about protocols and social media, but nothing has really worked. All social media feels like it’s morphed into one big (out)rage-baiting, AI sloppified monster… even the promising ones like Bluesky.1
While everyone is busy building new protocols, I noticed that we haven’t really looked at our existing ones and found ways to reinvent them. Or, perhaps it has been looked at, but not widely discussed.
From the outside, it seems that one day, someone just said, “OK email is done,” then moved on to the next thing. Since then, it’s been in a downward spiral, just like postal mail: mostly junk with a few important items sprinkled in. We abandoned postal mail for email and abandoned email for messaging apps. Now, we rarely get new email features or redesigns. When was the last time someone completely reimagined it?
Could email, one of the most powerful open protocols we still have, become a new kind of Internet?2 While it’s not a platform, it does have potential: it’s a universal address system, a decentralized network (somewhat federated, but not entirely closed), and has an identity layer and basic UX that everyone online already shares.
Let me explain how I got here.
In the crypto/blockchain world, there are some brands experimenting with on-chain social posts (Zora), and more versatile social media apps that you can build on top of (Farcaster - imagine Instagram with an app store built inside). These innovative (but also somewhat flawed) ways of reimagining social keep me hanging around X3 and crypto, watching what others are building using new tech. But, I don’t know if or when wider adoption of these ideas could infiltrate our current apps, which continue to get sloppier and “enshittier.”4
Media companies and brands have started launching on Substack, which means they realize no one is clicking and going to their websites anymore and social algorithms have made it impossible to reach existing followers, and so they want their content in your face inbox. Many of the media players, influencers, brands, and even some friends I follow are now blogging sending their content as newsletters. Nobody is going to homepages and article pages anymore. But, Substack cannot become the next Internet because 1) it’s not the only player in the game, 2) it already has a pervasive AI problem, and 3) it is not an open source protocol.
Related: Did you know that Youtube & Beehiiv are integrated and are co-hosting events? The battle for your inbox is coming! Let’s hope it doesn’t get enshittified, too!
While we’re in the newsletter boom 2.0 right now, it’s possible that it won’t last much longer and email will continue to be cannibalized by social media DMs, group chats, and messaging apps like Slack.
But, what if it evolves?
When the Internet is operated entirely by AI bots and agents, imagine that instead of opening our browser app, we open our inbox but it has been redesigned like a dashboard.
Inside this new inbox, aka the “superinbox,” are the things you subscribe to—those you want to read/see, and all of the friends you follow are all in there posting updates. There is no algorithm here. Everything is opt-in, chronological, and all spam gets put in a bin that your AI filters for you, but you can review and clean out regularly yourself if you want. Perhaps your personal AI agent is in there, too, asking you what you need to buy, plan, do, etc.
Every message in the superinbox could become a living card. For example, a meeting invite arrives already summarized, with one-click join links and a digest of who’s attending. A shopping receipt automatically files itself into expenses. A newsletter you subscribed to gets instantly condensed into highlights you can act on—or expanded. Every email is authenticated.
Your AI filters the noise, organizes the data, and acts as a broker on your behalf. Perhaps you need to take a trip so you email flights@travel with your dates and preferences, or use /book in the prompt bar to book a trip. Your agent negotiates in the background, and options show up in your inbox like magic. Pick one, and everything else updates automatically: calendar, expense report, and even the hotel reservation.
Once the Internet becomes so saturated with AI, email becomes a dark forest—a refuge where you escape the noise, the algorithms, and the enshittification. Your inbox could become a protected place, a human only space for authentic communication. Maybe you have to invite your AI agent in and give it specific rules and guardrails.
Blockchain-backed authentication could ensure that when you get an email from a friend, or your bank, or your employer, you know it’s really them.
Essentially it could become an everything app and still run on an OS.
Ultimately, I think we’re just going to end up putting things on a Blockchain (see footnote #2). With its acquisition of Privy and decision to launch an L1 blockchain called Tempo, Stripe is finally realizing a moment that’s been building for years: financial transactions on the blockchain. Deutsche Bank is building an L2 on Ethereum. Coinbase is constantly fighting for its life in Washington. And, approximately twenty financial institutions have built crypto-specific infrastructure and applications.5 Once finance has it figured out, we should be able to easily move everything related to those transactions on-chain as well. We should also be able to create a verified identity for each of us that lives both in physical form and digital form (in a hella secure way of course!).
I don’t have a crystal ball, but thinking about this in depth has lit up a new part of my brain. Whether it’s a safe harbor, a frictionless everything app, or a trash heap of junk mail, you have to admit email is still interesting.
We have to ask:
Why would anyone start a newsletter company in this economy?
If you’re new here, I don’t usually write about blockchain, but I look into the not-so-far future to understand how new tech, newsletters, social media, and AI will merge and how culture, economics, and psychology shape us and our world. I also sometimes talk about personal and professional growth, referencing my own experiences.
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Appreciate y’all being here. Would love to have you back again soon.
Sorry, I just never really got into Bsky…
I am not discounting the fact that we could also build a whole new Internet or netspace just for humans that is blockchain-based. Africa just launched their own Internet so they don’t have to rely on the outside, making it faster and keeping transaction fees inside the country. However, I think Big Tech is relying on us sticking around the cozy web, keeping ourselves glued to our phones, and ingesting the slop they are feeding us.
Can’t wait for the day when I never have to open that app again.
See “enshittification”
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