> A hash of the password could be part of the key
Except when it's not (and the full password is used instead).
After looking at the doc, it seems Protonmail uses GPG and computes the keys on the client device. (So I was wrong in my reply earlier).
However, when you send an unencrypted email with Protonmail, they claim that they encrypt the email at rest, but the claim is not verifiable.
I don't think this is true. A hash of the password could be part of the key, but Protonmail already has that hash stored on its server (otherwise they would not be able to log you in when you send the password hash). If Protonmail would like to access your emails (or be asked to do so), I'm confident that they technically can. The only benefit is when a hacker get access to the email database, but not the password hash database, then in this case the hacker cannot read the emails.