NOSTR-NATIVE · ENCRYPTED · LOCAL-FIRST
Email, rebuilt on Nostr.
No servers. No spying. No spam.
nVelope is a desktop email client built on the Nostr-Mail protocol. No providers, no accounts, no KYC — you are your own provider. Relays store and transport; only you can read.
No email providers
No Gmail, no middleman. Your identity is a keypair; the network is public relays.
No metadata leakage
Every message ships in a blinded envelope signed by a throwaway key. Nobody can see sender, receiver, subject, or thread.
No spam that pays off
Proof-of-work postage: ten minutes of compute thrown away by a delete button doesn’t scale. Spam stops paying.
FEATURES
What email should be.
RSA mail certificates
Mail is encrypted to a separate certificate key — not your nsec. If your nsec ever leaks, your mail history doesn’t. Blast-radius containment by design.
Blinded envelopes
Each message is sealed in a kind:8500 envelope signed by a fresh throwaway keypair. Relays and observers see noise; you see mail.
Proof-of-work postage
You set the price per trust tier: zero work for contacts, minutes of hashing for strangers. The delete button becomes the most expensive spam filter ever built.
npub + NIP-05 addressing
Write to an npub or a human-readable NIP-05 address. NIP-65 relay discovery finds where your recipient actually listens.
Local-first vault
Passphrase-encrypted identity vault, multi-account, export and import across machines. Mail lives in a local SQLite store — save it, archive it, find it months later.
Bodies & attachments
Markdown, plaintext, or HTML bodies. Attachments ride on Blossom. Full To/CC/BCC and threading — the workflow you already know.
HOW IT WORKS
Four steps. Zero trust required.
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01
Generate keys & a mail certificate
Your identity is a Nostr keypair. nVelope issues a separate RSA mail certificate (
kind:30998profile) so mail keys live apart from your nsec.identity vault · passphrase-encrypted · export/import
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02
Set your policy
Choose how much work each tier must prove: nothing for contacts, seconds for acquaintances, minutes for strangers. Your inbox, your toll gate.
recipient-priced · NIP-13-style difficulty
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03
The sender mines PoW & seals the envelope
Before delivery, the sender’s client hashes until the difficulty target is met, then encrypts to your cert key and signs the envelope with a throwaway keypair.
kind:8500 blinded envelope · no observable metadata
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04
You scan, decrypt, read
Your client scans relays for candidate envelopes and trial-decrypts locally. What opens is mail; what doesn’t was never meant for you.
NIP-65 relay discovery · local SQLite store
SCREENSHOTS
A client, not a feed.
The quiet protocol — save it, archive it, find it months later. No endless scrolling.
PROTOCOL
Built on an open spec.
Nostr-Mail is a published protocol, not a product promise. Read it, implement it, interoperate.
Blinded envelopes
Sealed message containers signed by ephemeral keys. Sender, receiver, subject and thread are invisible to everyone but the recipient.
kind:30998Mail certificates
Published RSA mail-cert profiles. Senders encrypt to your cert; your nsec stays out of the decryption path entirely.
NIP-13Proof-of-work
Difficulty-tagged events make sending costly in proportion to how little the recipient trusts you — not how rich the spammer is.
NIP-05 / NIP-65Addressing & discovery
Human-readable addresses and relay lists, so mail finds you wherever your relays happen to be.
nvelope-core
The protocol as a library. Build your own client, bot, or bridge on the same core nVelope uses.
npm install nvelope-core
White paper
The full design rationale — blinded envelopes, cert encryption, PoW policy tiers, broadcast mail — published on Yakihonne.
DOWNLOAD
Get the beta.
nVelope is v0.1.0-beta.4 and we’re actively looking for testers. Grab a build from GitHub Releases and tell us what breaks.
or build from source
git clone https://github.com/StevenDay83/nvelope-client.git
ROADMAP
Broadcast Email Studio
Create and manage subscriber based newsletters and announcements.
nVelope-ListServ
Manage mailing lists over Nostr.
Official v0.1.0 release
From beta to stable — hardened by tester feedback.
FAQ
Questions, answered.
Is this SMTP?
No. nVelope speaks the nVelope protocol over Nostr relays. There are no mail servers to run or trust, no provider accounts, and no SMTP ports involved. Relays store and transport sealed envelopes; your client does everything else.
What if my nsec leaks?
Your mail history stays sealed. Messages are encrypted to a separate RSA mail certificate (published as a kind:30998 profile), not to your nsec. A leaked nsec is bad — but it doesn’t hand an attacker your mail.
How does proof-of-work stop spam?
You set a cost per trust tier: zero work for contacts, minutes of hashing for strangers. A spammer blasting a million inboxes must burn minutes of compute per message — and ten minutes of work deleted by one button doesn’t scale. Spam stops paying.
Where is my mail stored?
Locally, in a SQLite store on your machine, inside a passphrase-encrypted identity vault. Relays hold only sealed envelopes they cannot read. You can export and import your vault across machines.
Can I use my existing npub?
Yes. Bring your existing Nostr identity or generate a fresh one — nVelope is multi-account. You can also use a NIP-05 address so people can mail you at something human-readable.
Does it work on mobile?
Not yet. nVelope is an Electron desktop app for macOS, Windows, and Linux. The nvelope-core library is platform-agnostic, so mobile clients are possible — just not on the current roadmap.