You’re correct. Besides, proof of work in Aether is user adjustable, everyone can choose their own threshold. No need to turn it up unless you see spam. As you turn it up it becomes harder for other computers to pass your filters, which will cut down on spam (or anyone who’s trying to create too many posts for any reason).
While reading this, an idea popped up in my head about monetization. Sending a message needs spending a PoW token that can be mined or bought. The price is set by the recipient and can be different for different senders. Zero for friends, a high number for potential spammers. The author, however, has a private key that can produce PoW tokens cheaply, but still in a limited amount to retain trust and prevent diluting everyone's share to nothing. Some companies may want to send spam and will be happy to buy PoW tokens. Users that suddenly start getting spam, raise the bar, as it costs them nothing. Those companies now need more tokens and they come to you. This is inflation. As long as SEC understands what's going on, it shouldn't have problems with this sandbox economics.
I thought about monetisation and it’s also in the talk linked but ultimately I’ve decided to not monetise it. Instead, to make it sustainable, I’ve created a separate app called Aether Pro at https://aether.app. It’s a much better version of Google Groups. You would use it if you wanted the modern features of Slack like channels, guests and integrations, but you also want to keep email discussions as your main work tool, and not move to chat.
By having them separate, I can make sure that the the P2P version isn’t influenced by money-making concerns, since we have a product explicitly made for that.
I presume it should also be possible to reduce the threshold for my contacts/friends... so that strangers emailing me for the first time need proofs, but frequent contacts don’t.
