NXT email system, NXTmail or nmail?

[leeo]

This might be the killer app that kick-starts NXT.  How about a genuine e-postage system requiring the sender to include NXT to be collected by the reader.  I would think that in a friendly exchange, the same coin would be effectively tossed back and forth.

I am not familiar with the NXT system, is there a cryptography public/private key pair?  If not, just use my Litecoin public key to encrypt the email you send me.  I would look at my in-box, picking those messages with the most "postage" to read first.

With the leakage from Edward Snowden of massive electronic snooping, perhaps the conditions are just perfect for such a system to go viral.  Here is an older article identifying the possibility of e-postage.  http://www.taugh.com/epostage.pdf  However, since it predates the crypto currency phenomena, its conclusion that such a system is unworkable may need to be rethought.

Here is what I plan to do to test out this idea.

1) apply for an e-mail and shell account.  I intend to use www.eskimo.com.  Application pending.
2) get a NXT account and buy some NXT.  I think about $450 worth I can live with.
3) buy 1 LiteCoin
4) invite testers to email me.  In the e-mail you can request your NXT coin back, if you want.

This might be a fun project.  In software development, the requirement for a tool designer to employ his building tool is referred to as "dogfeeding".  The premise is that the seller of dog food would be willing to sample his own product.  I would use the e-mail account to coordinate the development and testing.  Anyway, I invite comments.

[utopianfuture]

take sometimes to get used to NXT eco-system. A lot of works are being done here.

[leeo]

Here is what I plan to do to test out this idea.

1) apply for an e-mail and shell account.  I intend to use www.eskimo.com.  Application pending.
2) get a NXT account and buy some NXT.  I think about $450 worth I can live with.
3) buy 1 LiteCoin
4) invite testers to email me.  In the e-mail you can request your NXT coin back, if you want.

#1 is complete -- my email for this test is [email protected] .  Note that I am currently accessing it from a Windows-7 laptop via PuTTY.  This generates a SSL text based terminal connection.   eskimo.com has great shell account packages at very reasonable rates.  As a side thought, I wonder if I could convince them to run the light-weight NXT shell as a daemon.  It would not waste cpu resources like bitcoin mining would.  I am currently on the two-week free trial, but plan to buy a year's worth of service.

for #2, my main barrier is coming up with my 70-character access phrase.   I was ignorant of the entire crypto-currency phenomena until hearing about it December 9 on Coast To Coast AM.  This enthralled me and I began investigating the community.  If I string all of the strong passwords I have used throughout my life I only get to 33 characters.  I thought of doubling this with a key number in between the two copies, but doesn't this violate the spirit of the 70-character access phrase?  How do I go about figuring out the rest of the phrase and follow the sprit of the requirement?  I want both something I can live with, something that I won't mind remembering, and something that I can practice daily for the next three weeks until I have it in muscle memory.  I'm still working on this.

For the second half of #2, I am trying to time a market bottom, or at least try to buy into a falling market.  There is evidence that the current valuation of about USD 0.04 per NXT is a bit overvalued, and there should be a shakeout in the next few weeks.  I'm not too worried about finding the exact bottom of the bottom -- as I plan to hold BTC long term.

Also, I do not have any wallets or cryptocoins whatsoever, so may I with permission of the moderators blog my experience here about safely buying a stake in NXT.  You could email a NXT to [email protected] but I won't be able to cash them until I get my 70 character login phrase.  --LeeO

[leeo]

I did successfully install a NXT client, and have the account 8225732605502514703 -- excellent tutorial on setting up the system.  I do like the keypass password safe.  --LeeO

[leeo]

 I found a fountain and was awarded 4.0 NXT.  Thank you very much.
 I decided to get in through BTC, and have purchased 1 bitcoin by selling my last remaining platinum bullion coin.
 I received a referral bonus from the trader.  This I sent to bter to convert to NXT, but, alas, the referral bonus amounted to less than 100 NXT which is the minimum to send away to my current account.  Thus I'll have to wait through the confirmation period until I have enough NXT to exceed the minimum to bring into my own account.
 I successfully spent 1.0 of my 4.0 NXT in my account to purchase an alias, tying "leeo" to my account number "8225732605502514703".  With the nextcoin client running locally, entering:

http://localhost:7874/nxt?requestType=getAliasURI&alias=LeeO

returns

{"uri":"8225732605502514703"}

===== =====

I now feel I have enough to cobble together a rudimentary manual "sender postage" e-mail.  I'm prepared to give away the remaining NXT in my account from the fountain as a bounty.  At this stage, I will accept a proof of work protocol, and award the bounty to the best email that includes a proof of work.  If you have an older bitcoin miner around, that might do.  Draft an e-mail message, include the following information, and your NXT account, and the 3.0 remaining NXT are yours.
 
As a fan of XML, you may email [email protected] something like this with subject: SHA256( msg ) = 4DAFB537F9248B145487841C03AFC43DFF4B17FFB71BE107F2B2F7054730EB5F

<POW>
  <NONCE> 6 </NONCE>
  <ORIGIN> 50459 12462851574499975599 26.01.2014 07:44:24 0 297.07 0 0 12292439833850569026 </ORIGIN>
  <MSG> any short message you want to include here. </MSG>
  <TO_NXT> 8225732605502514703 </TO_NXT>
</POW>

though I will also accept a similar JSON formatted message.  <ORIGIN> is from the latest NXT block at the time I wrote this.  Please include this exactly as shown to prove you started your POW after this time.  <TO_NXT> includes your NXT account number; what I placed in the example was my own NXT account number.  From the best formatted messages, I'll pick the best POW result I can verify.

The <MSG> you may leave blank, but why not suggest how a URL can be included that would award the reader an e-postage of NXT on activation.

I may be delayed a few days while the payment for the eskimo.com shell account goes through.
  --LeeO

[afia]

nxtmail sounds good

[leeo]

is it possible to generate an offer token?  Currently the only way I perceive of transferring NXT is to push it into an account with the NXT client.  However for an e-mail "postage" application it would be nice to include an offer token that permits a particular account to claim up to the amount of NXT in the token from my account.  Accepting the NXT from the offer can be tied to agreeing to the performance of a particular contract, or at least legally prove that my e-mail was received and read.

Currently, I can do the following:  create a special account with a new passphrase.  Push some NXT into the account.  Then e-mail the account passphrase to the recipient, and hope that is wasn't intercepted.  This seems very inelegant because of all of the additional accounts that would have to be created, one for each client.
--LeeO  NXT: 8225732605502514703

[leeo]

Here are some preliminary proposals for setting up a NXT email system linked to a NXT account.  I will use my own primary account for the examples, which is 8225732605502514703, and my own e-mail I use for the account, which is "[email protected] ".  Any clients wishing to participate in an e-mail system where each piece of mail can include a proof of work or even a reading bounty "e-postage"  I propose that each participating client would purchase the following aliases.

I.  (optional) handle -- if a short nickname is desired to help identify the account.  For myself, I have "leeo" as an alias for "8225732605502514703".

II.  All emails regarding the account.  I propose that participating accounts purchase the alias of the form following the example for my account:  "8225732605502514703email" as an alias for "[email protected] ".  Note I have not purchased this alias as yet, but do have this commercial e-mail account.  Any commercial or non-commercial email account address could be employed.  In addition, I could specify that I refuse to accept any email to this account without a specific attached reader bounty in NXT.  Then, perhaps I have an alias "8225732605502514703email" as an alias for "[email protected] -NXT:2.0" requiring the sender to pony up 2.0 NXT as a reader's bounty, not including the transaction fees.  I would propose that any alias beginning with a valid account number be reserved for exclusive use of the account.

III.  Encryption public key:  If the user wants to received encrypted email, the public encryption key can be specified here.   I have not exactly worked out what format would be preferred -- how about a bitcoin public address, however if NXT has a retrievable usable encryption system, that may be included instead.  "8225732605502514703publickey" as an alias for "1CC3X2gu58d6wXUWMffpuzN9JAfTUWu4Kj".  This particular example is from http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Base58Check_encoding .
I have not purchased this alias yet, in any form.  If I wish to specify that all e-mail must be encrypted, perhaps the alias
"8225732605502514703email" would refer to "[email protected] -NXT:2.0 -encrypt:required".

Now, suppose that I receive an email from account 3791936988034107349 that includes 2.0 NXT as a reader's bounty "e-postage".  The owner of account 3791936988034107349 would generate an authentication token for the "website" of the following name: "8225732605502514703NXT:2.0", which is

quj6mp8oj4er2b46guvi1viqtg2utrb1nivijah8rocrq7njdf8o8seurvjklg00jvm998c1q10eom03ggamvdvlfff8pqdgi4jtcg3pmq60stio9tlnjng8a7n5ki3ef1bup74bqc28omcs4ul40gm5q0i2ed03

she would send this authentication token to a decentralized clearinghouse with 4.0 NXT.  The clearinghouse would then issue a "claim check" which could be included in the e-mail in some form - perhaps a link to a small automated bot that credits the receiving account.  I would propose the reader specify how many NXT he is willing to accept of the proposed amount.  For situations where a distributed autonomous corporation is involved, the acceptance of the bounty could be tied to accepting the terms of a contract under penalty of forfeiting some desired asset or performance rating.

LeeO: NXT 8225732605502514703