Nostr is the way. It will take time but it's sufficiently decentralized. Doesn't require DNS. Users hold their own keys. Fairly easy to run a relay. It's also a trust network, with encryption out of the box, so I think it will become a usable successor for email+GPG.

> Email is horribly centralized

You’re seeing the downsides of decentralization not the result of centralization. There’s ~100’s of thousands of independently operated email servers, but nobody is directly forcing people to listen to everyone else. Instead they must stay reasonably open because the cloud didn’t win, work school and emails are still frequently independent.

This is an absolute killer for mainstream adoption. Normal people _absolutely do not want to manage keys_. And will lose them. Like, see Bitcoin; relatively enthusiast user base, and still people lose keys _all the time_.